


Stay Gold

by Renega



Series: Stay Gold [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Cheaper than Therapy, F/M, Retcon, Season 8.7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:33:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 81,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22522567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Renega/pseuds/Renega
Summary: As the city of his birth burns around him, Ser Davos makes a desperate bid to get his last remaining son out of King's Landing. On the Kingsroad at the Trident, the forces of the north gather to hear the outcome of the Battle for the Dawn.Can they build a lasting peace on secrets and lies?
Relationships: Arya Stark & Gendry Waters, Bran/Isle of Faces, Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth, Podrick Payne & Meera Reed, Tyrion Lannister & Sansa Stark
Series: Stay Gold [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1639381
Comments: 158
Kudos: 131





	1. Fair Winds & Foul Words

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Sam. Who is at least named after a character who survived the bloodbath that was 2019. Take your Sad Brienne costume and shove it.

“I don't want to die,” she keeps crying, and he can't recall her seeming so small and scared as she does in that moment. It's hell outside; if they're going to die, this crypt seems as good a place as any. For all Tyrion promised him a skip and fair sailing, there's a dragon circling the bay and a city on fire and he's bleeding from several shallow slash wounds to the muscles around his hips and a deeper one in his abdomen. With a maester's care, they're not life threatening, but having to row a skip out to sea with them will be a death knell. 

Die there; die here. Death is the only constant. Jaime gives up, surrenders. 

He will never be sure what overcomes him in that moment, takes hold of his will, but while he means to reach out to Cersei and console her, he moves back toward the crack of light shining through the rubble, and he begins to dig. Her cries became louder and more frantic behind him.   
  
“Move,” he yells, as a large stone tumbles past him. He glances over his shoulder. 

She doesn't even flinch; it misses her by chance, passing so close it tears at her skirt. She stands frozen, still repeating that she doesn't want to die. The rocks hiss around them, the foundations shaking as towers crumble above them. He pushes himself through the opening and turns back, holding his hand out to her. 

“We don't have to die. Take my hand.”

Cersei stands shaking, crying. She stares at him, her eyes swimming with tears. “I don't want to die. Don't leave me, Jaime, don't leave me.”

“Take it!” He shouts. “I'm not leaving without you!”

An arch gives way and the roar drowns his words and her cries. Jaime draws his legs underneath him, grasping for purchase on the stones to push himself back through the opening; he'll have to carry her out.  
  
Brienne would've taken his hand. 

He'd taken hers, in circumstances no less bleak. 

That's his last thought before the blackness takes him. 

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

His father is alive. He has only a brief moment to feel relief before he's hauled onto his feet by a fist at the back of his neck and a gruff, “Come on.”

So he walks, and because he knows his father's moods he says nothing, asks nothing. They all heard the bells from their camp on their ridge. Why wasn't the battle stopping, why wasn't it over, why hadn't the troops returned? Then one by one and in groups they began to trail back, the victorious men of the north. Few had battle wounds; there was little blood. But they screamed and wailed as they stumbled naked beyond the lines, casting off their burning armor as their skin began to blister. It was hell. There was no other word for it. And theirs the spoils. 

The city is burning; he feels a flush of relief as he follows his father around the gates and down to the beach away from the cries and explosions and flames, says nothing as they squeeze through a stand of bushes and two narrow stones that drop off onto a ledge. He's never taken this path, but it's clear his father has and he would follow him anywhere. They clamber over a set of boulders and emerge onto a rocky strand behind one of the Red Keep's half-collapsed towers. The air is full of smoke, burning bodies and burning rubble, but even so the smell of freshly cauterized flesh is overpowering. A man lies on the strand next to a small skiff, his abdomen swathed in bandages, his right arm bandaged just below the elbow. Devan can't see his face for the white dust that's caked on his skin and clothes.   
  
“You cut it off?” His father looks flummoxed. “You've killed him.”

The man shrugs. “It was crushed in the rock, along with the hand. He was dead if I didn't, and if he survives the cunt'll thank me for it.”

Can you kick someone's foot as they lie bandaged and bleeding with affection? Despite the harsh words and the apparently necessary actions, the cracks that line the man's face as he smirks, his eyes are misty as he picks up the broken body by the arm pits. His father grabs the man's legs and together they place him in the stern of the boat kindly, almost gently.   
  
A scuffling sound behind him draws his gaze, and he sees Lord Tyrion emerge from a crack in the keep and clamber down a pile of rubble holding a brick covered in blood and seven only knows what else...it looks like chunks of flesh. He tosses it into the prow without cleaning it, and it lands next to a blood soaked bundle.   
  
“I beat his face in. It was surprisingly satisfying. The hand?”  
  
“It's there.”  
  
“Then my doom awaits. Fair winds, young Seaworth.”

The Lord Tyrion nods to him, and it surprises Devan that the hand of the dragon queen even knows who is, let alone acknowledges him. After the Red Woman raised King Jon from the dead, his father told him to either go home to his mother or learn to disappear in plain sight. He thought he'd done a pretty good job of that, since no one ever acknowledges the mostly silent squire of Ser Davos. And fair winds?

But…Devan is not sailing anywhere. 

“Try not to die, you stupid cunt, or I'll never be lord of the fucking flowers.” The man with the harsh face and misty eyes has a foul tongue. He sees his father's mouth purse in distaste.   
  
Lord Tyrion smirks, the shadow in his eyes gone for just a brief moment before it returns more black than before and the smirk twists into a grimace. “Thank you, Bronn. Ser Davos.”

He nods and goes the way they came, picking his way slowly toward the boulders. His father and the stranger – Bronn? - watch him go and nod to him as he looks back. Devan waves, and then realizes everyone there really does think Lord Tyrion is walking toward execution and he feels like waving was an immensely stupid thing to do.

When he is gone, their attention turns back to Devan and he flushes as the stranger appraises him in silence and his father regards him with something tinged with finality and despair, speaking carefully. “Get out past the hook and then sail south until you reach Tarth. Go round the back side and come into Evenfall from the South. They'll not have their ships on that side. If anyone stops you, you're two soldiers from the north who got pinned up in King's Landing and stole a boat because you couldn't get back to your lines. You served under the Evenstar's daughter at the Battle of Winterfell and you're hoping for succor as her swords.”

Fair winds indeed. Devan is pretty sure this is the most desperate plan his father has ever hatched. He wonders why he can't just keep sailing a bit further south -   
  
“Don't go to your mother. She won't be safe if you do.”

It's fair to say he has no idea what's happening, or how victory has resulted in this, or why a fifteen year old squire deserting a battle in a little boat amounts to treason. 

“There's a kit in there. Water, food. Use the white salve for the burn on his arm and the green one for the puncture wounds. Try to keep the idiot alive, if you can. Toss those over,” the stranger nods to the gruesome rock and the bloody bundle, “when you get a league or two out.”

“I don't understand,” he blurts, and his father puts a hand on his shoulder, shaking his head sadly.   
  
“It's better if you don't.”

Devan pales. He studies the man lying prone a little more closely, tries to figure out if he holds the clues to why all the secrecy is necessary. But the face is bruised from the rubble, and covered in dust, and the clothes aren't familiar. “Who is he?”

“Ser Brynden Stone, sworn to Robb Stark and therefore Jon Snow. He's a highborn bastard, hedge knight, rumor has it a byblow of the Blackfish. Served with distinction at Winterfell. Had to sever his arm when he was crushed in the rubble of King's Landing while he was fighting with the Starks. Damned shame.”

His father's eyes widen as the stranger recites the man's biography as if he's memorized it, and Devan knows that it's a falsehood.   
  
“You came by that quick enough,” his father grumbles, but the man just smiles and shrugs.   
  
“I've been Ser Brynden myself once or twice. Best swordsman in the Vale, he is.”

His father grimaces at the falsehood but he nods. 

Devan can't help but ask the obvious. “But what if when he wakes up that's not who he says he is?”

“Bright lad you've got here, Seaworth.” He laughs. “If he wakes up, then I guess – my boy – that it'll be your job to convince him. Brynden Stone. If you want to keep that pretty head on your shoulders.”

He must look alarmed because his father squeezes his shoulder even harder, almost painfully, and it grounds him.   
  
“You're safer out there than here. Bury him at sea if he doesn't survive, but go to Evenfall regardless. You're my son, and you served under Ser Brienne at Winterfell; Lord Selwyn will give you harbor. If I can, I'll send word to you. If I cannot...I'm proud of you, my boy. When the storms blow over, find your way back to your mother.”

“What about you?” He asks, and he can feel his voice rising, the panic in his chest like a roar, because after all he's still only fifteen and this is madness, “What will you do?”

“I'll save as many lives as I can.” 

And of course he will because that's all his father has ever done, all he's ever been, and that's why it's like a knife in his chest. His father will die here if he has to, gladly. As he's always been prepared to die...but before Devan knew that whatever happened at least they were together. 

“Go.”

And now…  
  
And now they will not be. 

The last best gift he can give the man he loves more than life itself is to swallow back the catch in his throat and choke down the panic and leave him as a man does when he's given a mission, and so Devan forces himself to do it. “Massey's hook and then south around the East side of Tarth. I will, Ser Davos.”

He turns to the stranger. “Brynden Stone, a hedge knight of the Vale. Sworn to defend the Starks, fought in the north and then here. I'll do my best.”

He does not look at his father as he boards the ship, prepares the oars that will bear them out into the bay so he can set the sail. He forced himself to look toward the sea as they untie the boat and push it out into the water, slapping the sides for luck as they release him. He rows the ache out of his chest just enough so he can use his voice and then he turns his head and his father is still knee high out in the water, watching him go. “Farewell, Father!”

He shouts it. His voice only breaks a little and he's proud of that. And then he is crying as his father raises a hand in farewell and he's rowing to the sound of sobs and it might be the grief or it might be the terror or it might be the sound of dragons shrieking and cities burning and children wailing in the hell that he is escaping, but it seems only a moment before he is far enough out to raise his sail. He's not a Seaworth for nothing and he tilts the boom just so. The sail flutters for a moment before it catches and Devan is tacking into a brisk East wind before the stones of King's Landing have stopped falling.

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

Davos has seen a lot. He cannot make sense of what happens next. He hikes back up the beach, a man he met just an hour ago – if you can call it meeting when you wind up on a beach with an empty boat and a dead Euron Greyjoy and the man is cutting the Kingslayer out of a pile of rubble while Tyrion Lannister looks helplessly on and murmurs encouraging words – trailing behind him. 

He doesn't know this man. He doesn't particularly trust him. And given that they've just committed treason  **no matter who survives** and lied baldly about it to the only thing Davos still has that's close to innocent, he's not particularly happy about any of it. He's not exactly sure how he got sucked into it, except that Tyrion made a plea about Jaime Lannister and a boat for Tarth and Davos likes Brienne. He trusts her. He meant it when he told Devan he would be safe with Lord Selwyn at Evenfall, and he believes that will be true no matter what happens. But this man serves Tyrion, or knows him, or expects some sort of payment – he's not sure what sort of arrangement they have. And Tyrion has just betrayed his queen. A queen that Davos fears is a few crabs short of a ferment. 

He best make it clear where he stands. “I'm Davos Seaworth. I serve the King of the North.”

“Yes, Ser Davos the Onion Knight, savior of Storm's End, hand of so many kings in the north. Ser Bronn of the Blackwater.”

“You serve Lord Tyrion?”

“Fuck no. With him, sometimes. I serve the living, like enough.”

“Like enough is not an answer, not if you expect to follow me into that camp.”

“Well I don't serve the dead. They don't fight or fuck or feast and that's what living's for -” and suddenly Davos' hand is on his sword and it's ludicrous and a threat he can't back up and he's pretty sure the man in front of him is not immodest about his ability in vain, but everything is burning and this bell end is mocking it -   
  
“Ser Jaime pledged my service to the Lady Brienne when he treated with Edmure Tully at the siege of Riverrun. I aided the escape of Ser Brienne and her wee lad Podrick in a boat and supplied them with horses. But for fuck's sake, don't _tell_ anyone that.”

The man has him going for moment and the rage subsides but Davos sneers. “I can't confirm it, then. Convenient.”  
  
“Don't  **tell** anyone. Ask Podrick. Who was there at Blackwater when Podrick speared a man to save Lord Tyrion? Ser Bronn of the fucking Blackwater, that's who. Who was there when Ser Jaime Lannister sent Podrick off with his Lady Knight? That's right, I was. Who gave them a little boat at Riverrun and had their horses waiting on the far side of the ford? Me again. I haven't been Brynden Stone  **all** my life,  _Lord_ Davos.”

“You serve the living.” Davos tests it on his tongue. Just a few short weeks ago, that's all any of them were...the living, and so lucky to be alive. Can he walk back into camp with a man he doesn't know, whose name might or might not be Bronn, just because Tyrion, who he's not sure he trusts anyway, beat a man's face in with a rock while they both abetted that and about a thousand other crimes?

It seems...dubious. 

“I serve Ser Brienne of Tarth, the Lord Commander of the North, and the men in that camp are _hers_.”

“Ser Brienne is pledged to Lady Sansa. Are you prepared to stand behind that?”  
  
“Well, Davos, I'd say it's rather convenient that the Lord Commander of the North just so happens to be pledged to the Lady Wife of the man who had me knighted for my service at the Blackwater. Makes my loyalties rather simple to explain.”

Davos considers that, how much truth is in it, and he finds that...he can't argue with it. Ser Bronn doesn't seem to serve anyone, but he seems to be aiding and abetting all the same people Davos is and maybe that is as strong a bond as can be made here at the edge of hell. 

He nods. “You'll do.”

The northern troops are glad to see them, and Davos tries to acknowledge all of them as they pass. He's looking for Jon and doesn't see him, but he finds Lord Royce and a few of the junior leaders in a circle outside the Warden's tent. Defeated and deflated, none of them come to attention at his approach. 

“Where's Lord Snow?”  
  
“Gone to talk to the Dragon Queen,” Royce growls.

“Lord Tyrion's been arrested,” says the Karstark boy, some distant of cousin of the Lady who fell in the Godswood. “But Herrick of Wintertown said he saw Arya!”

“Who's he?” Yohn Royce is staring at Bronn.  
  
“Ser Bronn of the Blackwater. I'm an agent of Ser Brienne of Tarth here in King's Landing, and I've come to help.”

Davos is confounded that this rallies the men, but it does. Lord Royce straightens his shoulders and the Karstark boy gets to his feet and eagerly asks, “Is she here?”

They all want someone to fix what's happened, what's still happening. But no one is going to fix things for them...they're all going to have to try to keep the devils at bay. Davos is just glad to be standing next to someone who's willing to help shoulder that load, and he lets Ser Bronn of the Blackwater answer.

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

Bronn's at his best when he doesn't think. He sees that they're willing to follow Brienne and he's chosen the right horse in the race. He perceives an opening and barrels in. He sees that they're wallowing and knows that she wouldn't be pleased to see it. “The raven went out a sennight ago. Not yet, but she will be here. And she won't find you all in disarray. Who's overseeing the wounded? Which of you is responsible for organizing the refugees? Where are the maesters?”

And all of a sudden, he's overseeing the mustering of the north outside the gates of King's Landing. Tyrion's in chains and the King in the North has fucked off to die and right now he's the only hope they've got and they're desperate for reasons to hope.   
  
“I'll help you, Ser. Benjen Karstark. I served under Ser Brienne at Winterfell.”

“Right you did.”

He ignores the dragon that alights overhead, shrieking, a human shadow clutched in its claws. The northern troops shake and gape, but he shouts at them until they snap out of their stupor and move again. Davos is talking to the commanders, and the Vale Lord is seeing to supplies. It's a start.

Any hope of rescuing Tyrion lies in these troops and their leaders. And with Tyrion, any chance of his castle. 

It will take a miracle, even so. It's a good thing he's made an art of failing upward. 

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

Brandon breaks the seal, reads, and hands the scroll to Sansa. 

It's the third raven in as many days. 

First there had been a cryptic, “A thousand eyes and two. The ravens have flown; make haste. The dragon walks a razor's edge; the wolf is sworn to follow. I fear what news the night will bring. LV.”

They made camp just above the neck. Brienne hadn't slept that night. 

In the morning, a pale thin girl had stepped onto the road on a short pony, a bow in her hand and a sword on her hip, and said simply, “Hello, Brandon. My father waits ahead with our fiercest folk; we've come to help.”

And the girl had turned out to be Meera Reed and the sword Dark Sister and she'd asked to ride at the front with Brienne and Podrick. She'd told them tales from beyond the wall, and despite the gloomy message from Lord Varys that afternoon Brienne had believed in miracles and all sorts of impossible things. Their ranks had grown and in a hopeful moment Brienne had sent off a raven of her own. 

The second night there had been a hastily scribbled, “Cersei and Daenerys dead; my list is finished. Chaos in the city, Jon and Tyrion arrested. Rode a pale horse and the Dothraki have kneeled to me. Make haste. Love, Arya.”

That night they had all – Brandon included – shared a skin of wine, and Brienne had forgotten all of her grief. 

It didn't even surprise her that morning when they reached the Twins and Edmure Tully was waiting with a sizable army. Brienne and Meera and Podrick had still ridden out at the front, and they'd been free to talk of their travels in low voices while the bannermen of the Starks and Tullys and Reeds and Freys fell in behind. And they were glad to be ahead of the caravan, keeping watch. Podrick had been the only easy company since Jaime left and Meera was a welcome addition. It had been a good day, perhaps the first really good day she'd had in two weeks, and she'd been grateful. 

Hope was such a fragile thing, but she remembered why life was worth fighting for. Or something like it, for a moment. 

And then, as they gathered around Lord Edmure's tent for the first well-prepared meal any of them had in days, another bird had perched on the arm of Brandon's chair and delivered its missive. 

“The wee lion is caged, the wolf in chains. The dragon queen and the Lannisters are dead. Order is barely holding. Make haste. Ser Davos.”

Someone sucks in a gasp as Sansa reads the message, her voice breaking on 'the Lannisters' as she looks up at Brienne. It's her. She's gasped, despite herself. 

They're all watching her.  _They aren't_ , she chides herself, but as she scans the faces around the fire they're all looking at her. Lady Sansa, Lord Brandon, Podrick, Meera. Even Howland Reed, who can't possibly know anything, is staring at her with something like concern in his narrowed hazel eyes. But worst of all is Edmure Tully's bald curiosity, the flash of triumph as his lips quirk, and “I'm a hateful man” ringing in her ears as she realizes with a sharp pain that to Edmure Tully he is hateful indeed. 

The faces around her swim, and she chokes back a bit of bile that burns in her throat, and forces herself to say, “If Ser Davos says to hurry we must. I'll tell the men to be ready to ride an hour before dawn.”

She clasps Oathkeeper's pommel over and over until her knuckles whiten as she strides to the outer ring of tents. “We ride before dawn,” she yells, and the junior commanders leave their tents to spread word to the armies and as soon as they're moving she turns toward the forest and makes it about fifty yards before she doubles over and heaves Edmure Tully's fine beef into the slush and mud at her feet. The pain in her chest is sharper than any blade she's ever felt and she gasps for air between the dry heaves that keep racking her body long after she's thrown up anything she's eaten in past three days and possibly part of her lungs. 

Briefly, she wonders if she's been poisoned, and then she hates herself because she's pretty sure it's just grief and wine and if Jaime is poison then she's been poisoned down to her soul for years and she doesn't regret a moment of it. Even if – when – loving him kills her. As it's likely to do, since somehow her hands are no longer on her knees but up to the wrist in the mud and the early spring grass is soft and cool against her forehead. 

It's wet, so wet she can't feel the tears on her cheeks as she kneels against the soil above the Trident, and the only sound is the distant shouting of men and the rhythm of the sobs racking her chest.

There is a soft hand rubbing her back and Brienne can barely remember a touch this gentle, her mother's hands soothing her, and she leans into the touch for just a moment before she steels her core and forces herself onto her knees, brushing the sleeve of her tunic against her face to wipe away the tears and sick and snot. Meera is sitting next to her, her legs crossed underneath her, and her eyes are full of understanding as she holds out a skin. “Drink.”

Brienne heaves again at the thought of wine, sour and vile on the back of her tongue, but Meera makes some soothing noise and nods to the skin. “Water. Drink. Even if you throw it up again, just keep drinking it until some sticks.”

She grasps the skin, forces herself to bring it to her lips. The water is cool and soothing; her stomach rolls, but it doesn't clench. She gulps down a third of it. “Thank you, I...”

And what can she say? She's just been caught puking and sobbing by a woman she met two days ago, a woman who dragged Brandon Stark across the entire north on a sled while hunted by the Army of the Dead. 

“You loved him.” Meera nods, sits back on her tailbone despite the mud, and pulls another skin of water from under her green cloak. “This”, she waves at Brienne, and the pile of sick a few feet away, “is part of that.”

Brienne doubts Meera – the maiden daughter of Howland Reed, who has apparently been hunting in the neck for all of her twenty years save one noteworthy adventure – has any idea what she's saying. But mostly she thinks Podrick has betrayed her sometime in the past thirty-six hours and it perturbs her. “How do you know?”

She knows she sounds petulant, but Meera laughs wryly. “I loved a boy. Loved him enough to go to the end of the world with him, and beyond, and keep going even after my brother was lost. I loved him enough that I was sick after he was lost to me, and I cried enough I grew gills.”

That's not what she meant. She gulps back another swig of water. “How do you know what I love?”

“You mean Ser Jaime?”

She nods. 

“Podrick? Lady Sansa? Brienne, everyone knows. Everyone knows, just as everyone knows I love Brandon. We know, but...we understand. It's alright.”

Despite herself, Brienne barks out a laugh, because this is the most ludicrous attempt to console her she can possibly imagine. “Brandon?”

“I spent my whole life protecting Jojen. He was always...fragile. Brandon – not as he is now, but before – was my best friend. He understood. And he...respected me. I loved him. And even though I know he's still in there somewhere, he's…beyond all that now. And I'll never see those parts of him again, but I'll guard the person he died to become with whatever I have left.”

“Oh.” So Meera does understand. “I'm sorry.”

The hand on her shoulder is soothing. “I'm sorry too. Can you rest? Podrick and I will keep watch.”

She drinks the rest of the water. Her head is beginning to clear, even if her throat still feels raw.   
  
Ordinarily, she'd protest. She'd pull herself together. She'd force herself to go through the motions. But right now she just feels grateful. She's never had a female friend before, not a real one, not one she hasn't sworn her sword to.   
  
“I'll try.”   
  
Meera nods and bounces onto her feet, grasping Brienne's hand and somehow pulling her up too despite their difference in size. They don't speak as they walk back to the encampment, swinging out around the circled tents to the watch. Brienne nods to Podrick, who is sitting by the fire and poking it balefully, and he cheers considerably when he sees them. “I'll take first shift, Ser. Lady Meera.”

“Thank you, Podrick,” she mutters, disappearing into her tent and stripping off her armor in a heap before throwing herself down onto the furs. She wraps her cloak around her face and imagines these things – this cloak, these furs – still smell as they once did, of sweat and lust. She wants only to sleep and dream herself back into the tender embraces of a month ago, when anything and everything still seemed possible. 

Even still, she lies awake a long time. The memories won't let her drift. Jaime's voice, arch and ironic, asking her to dance with a stolen sword. Jaime's voice, hoarse and desperate, shouting for her to get behind. Jaime's voice, warm and wet between her legs, reminding her for the thousandth time that he'd always come back because he dreamed of her. 

Jaime's voice, telling her goodbye. At Harrenhal, at King's Landing, at Riverrun, at Winterfell as the dead rushed toward them. 

_He was never silent in life_ , she thinks as sleep creeps toward her.  _How could he ever be silent in death?_


	2. Just Maids

The sun is high above him before Devan remembers that he's not alone. If his companion stirred, he didn't hear it. The beating sun and cool wind propels him to dig out the water, and tie his cloak overhead to shade them. He drinks deep and then tilts Ser Brynden's head back and trickles a bit of it down his throat. There's just enough for the journey if everything goes well, but there's not a lot of extra. He gathers a little in his hands and bathes the man's face, but he doesn't waste much trying to clean him up. It's difficult to tell who he was through the bruising and the rock dust and the blood, the smashed and swollen nose, but just for a moment…he thinks he sees someone they left behind to guard Winterfell. 

He looks to the right arm. And he finds a fresh wound. And that's...well, it's convenient. If you're trying to conceal a distinguishing feature, or kill off a Kingslayer. And after all, a Kingslayer would make what he's just done, sail away from a battle with a half-dead man, high treason. 

Devan is quiet but he isn't stupid. His father is wrapped up with Tyrion Lannister and maybe all kings are insane and it's just part of the job – even if they're queens. He's in a tiny boat sailing for an island he's never been to but he thinks maybe it will be okay if he can just get there. Anyway, Dragonstone was hell and when they all went north it was still hell and the army of the dead was hell, but...King's Landing was something beyond that. Anywhere is better than there. 

He tilts another dribble of water into the man's open mouth and he stirs, flailing his wounded arm and murmuring something that sounds suspiciously – though Devan may be only hearing what he wants to – like, “Jaime, something Jaime.”

That's going to be damning if the man survives and they actually make it to safety. So Devan leans in close, and takes the man's uninjured left hand in his own, and repeats, over and over, “Ser Brynden Stone, a knight of the vale. Ser Brynden Stone, a knight.”

There is an incomprehensible murmur of words and moans that he can't make out, but then it coheres. “Ser Brynnn, stones...sappherrrrs. Ser Brynnnn. Stones.”

It'll do, Devan supposes. It's close enough, though he's not sure Ser Brynden understands that it's supposed to be his name or if it will hold up under scrutiny. 

He's not sure he wants to know if his suspicions are true, but unpleasant tasks await. He throws the brick over the prow without a second thought, but he hesitates over the bundle. After a moment, he pulls back the mess of rags and finds a severed hand. 

So no. Ser Brynden he is not, but Devan doesn't know who he is.   
  
He's just about to toss the whole thing over the side when he realizes beneath the hand there is another lump. He shudders as he holds onto the lump and slides the hand into the water. Wrapped in the rags is another...stump. It's a bit of arm severed beneath the elbow – that's fresh – and above the wrist – that's not.

So he knows who the man is. And who he cannot be if either of them are going to survive. And he releases the secrets he's supposed to hold into the sea, into Blackwater Bay where the bones of his brothers lie wreathed in coral crowns. He keeps chanting, under his breath but then louder, “Ser Brynden Stone, a knight,” and if his companion's only response is to slur out 'sapphires'...he'll try not to panic. 

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

Brienne always takes the second – harder – watch. She's used to rising early. But she's surprised when she stirs – early enough indeed, just past the witching hour – and stumbles out of the tent with a mouth full of cotton and sour to find that Brandon and Sansa and Meera and Podrick are all still awake and sitting at the fire. Sansa hands her another skin of water without a word, and though she should be mortified she's actually rather touched. Brandon hands her a slip of paper and for a moment she fears it's the same missive they read the night before – she doesn't need to see or hear it twice. But then she recognizes the blue-white of the scroll and practically snatches it out of his hands.   
  
_'Ride. The Just Maid sails under your chosen flag.'_

She recognizes the hand, and the paper. There is no signature, no crest, no seal. This message is for her alone, though everyone else seems to understand it as they await her response. Sansa nods. Meera smiles. Podrick beams at her. Brandon...just stares at her. Knowingly. “Lady Meera and Lord Reed and our uncle will escort us. Go.”

Sansa quirks her lips, and the light in her eyes is warm. “I release you from my service, Ser Brienne, to guard the realms of men.”

“Our horses are saddled,” Podrick offers helpfully. 

She feels wrung out, disjointed. Her head aches and the muscles in her chest twitch from the violent sick a few short hours ago, but a wave of energy catches up to her and she wants nothing more than to ride into the void. The darkness where he went; he can't return, but she can follow, and she longs for her lover wherever he is. 

But she won't take Podrick with her. And she won't let her eyes get wet, or they'll know. She blinks quickly. Her voice is still rough, but it's steady. “Ride with the army, Podrick. You'll slow me down.”

“I'll go with you, Ser. I've kept up for a long time.”

He looks at her the way he always has, as if she could hang the moon if she really tried, but the rest of them are looking at her the same way and it's strange and wonderful and terrible all at once. They love her, in their way, as much as any of them can. She can't die uselessly, as Jaime's done, and disappoint them. She can't drag Podrick with her into the night. She won't. 

She's lost already and she hasn't even mounted her horse. She will have to keep the peace, for them. Try to survive, for them. 

The lump in her throat prevents her from saying anything at all. She just nods, and then they're swinging themselves into their saddles and she looks back just once to see the flames lighting the darkness and Brandon Stark, watching them go from his chair, with Sansa's red hair flaming in the dark to his right and the shadow of Meera Reed guarding his left, and she thinks…darkness may pursue them, dynasties might crumble, cities might fall…

But. 

She promised to defend the innocent, and now she must. 

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

Ser Bronn turns out to be both incredibly annoying and surprisingly competent all at once. He complains about the water until Yohn Royce insists some of the men band together to dig new wells. He insists on taking a group of men to Flea Bottom to 'check up on the brothels' and Davos tries to dissuade him but finally gives up. Maybe they all found a few minutes of release and maybe they didn't, but the men return talking of detailed plans to move aid into the city and help the wounded so it wasn't a wasted few hours. 

Arya moves between the Dothraki's camp and theirs, pacing up and down the edges of the Unsullied's perimeter to remind them that they're surrounded. She seems frankly horrified that riding a random horse has somehow turned into commanding an army of hostile invaders who don't speak the common tongue and are stranded at the Dragonpit in a region baying for blood and vengeance and mostly relief. Despite those misgivings, she's leaning in to anything she thinks will help Jon survive. At first, Davos thinks they're calling her Zora High, but it's Azor Ahai and they think she was promised long ago. “It's because I killed the night king,” she says, laughing, but then her mouth twists in bitterness, “Ironic, given how few of them were there for it.”

Perhaps it's petty to heap blame on a dead woman, but they do. The northern forces are exhausted. The battle at Winterfell was a catastrophic victory and the march south was relentless and unforgiving, and now the man they followed and fought for is a prisoner and the city they sought to recapture is in ruins. The Unsullied and Dothraki are leaderless as well, and the vast majority of both are the reserve armies left at White Harbor. They're not the Dragon Queen's best troops; armies of the dead and kings of the night are second-hand stories to most of the men who grow restless and hungry outside a city they don't mourn and have no interest in rebuilding. 

They're more mouths to feed. Dangerous ones. 

The worst fires were not Aerys and Cersei's paranoid wildfire land mines; they went off quickly, burned hot and fast, but didn't spread. The worst fires had been in the storehouses and kitchens, dragonfire and kindling, dry grain and wood for baking bread and bolts of cloth. Most of those fires are still burning. 

The northern troops travelled the Kingsroad light and fast, taking only what they needed. And the Lady Sansa, who managed logistics with the precision of Tywin Lannister and the stubbornness of the Blackfish, had sent them off with enough for the travel and a week of the aftermath. She hadn't provisioned them to feed a hundred thousand refugees and fifteen thousand soldiers. They hadn't expected her to. 

He looks at the supplies list Yohn Royce put on Jon's empty desk a half hour ago. They have four days of food for the armies and none to spare for the people of King's Landing. If the rest of the Starks are pressing hard, they're still four days out...and the closer they are, the more lightly provisioned they're traveling. 

Davos runs a tired hand over his face and wishes he were a younger man, and facing this quandary from another angle, with a fleet full of onions and the cover of darkness. 

Arya lets out a small grunt, and he realizes she's reading his lists upside down from across the table. He spins them and pushes them toward her. 

“Well?”

“Have you sent out a party to see what can be salvaged from Euron Greyjoy's fleet? The salted fish might've survived.”

Even a few hundred barrels of salted fish won't solve these problems, but anything is better than nothing. He nods and sends Benjen Karstark to find Bronn and gather some men to see what food they can manage to fish out of Blackwater Bay to feed the multitudes. 

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

Devan sails through the night, taking short breaks to doze at the beam and force a bit of salted beef down. Ser Brynden passes in and out of consciousness, sometimes murmuring what sounds like 'Maiwyn' and sometimes Devan's mantra and something about sapphires. He doesn't choke out his own name again, which is a relief, and he seems to be holding to life despite his wounds. 

Three ships pass them the second morning, two coming into the Bay and one sleek trading ship that seems hellbent on getting far away as quickly as possible. All three times he spots them early and is able to lower his mast and drift without detection until they're well away. He can feel the breeze and tide shift and he knows he's close to the hook. The wind off the hook will blow him eastward and he'll get a few hours of sleep before he has to turn south and tack again. When he spots the pale rocks of the point rising up out of the surf, he thinks he's miscalculated, drifted too close to land, will hit a coastal lull instead of the draft he was aiming for. 

He turns north as quickly as he can, but the rocks get closer and closer until suddenly they aren't rocks at all but white sails, a fleet of them, at least twenty ships traveling toward him with great speed. He lowers his own sail even though he knows he's left it too late, and that many ships will surely have spotted him bobbing toward them. The white sails send shivers down his spine, for so many vessels in a tight formation are unlikely to be pleasure cruisers, or hoisting blank sails in surrender. It's more likely a deception. 

“Ser Brynden!” he cries, tying off the boom and huddling down beside the prone man in the stern, shaking his shoulder as hard as he dares. “If you can wake up, now would be a good time.”

He groans and flails his bandaged arm, but then opens his eyes and blinks up at Devan. “Who're you?”

“Devan Seaworth, Ser. We left King's Landing yesterday morning. We're on the far side of Blackwater Bay, and we're about to be visited.”

He offers Ser Brynden a bit of water from a skin, and he drinks it as well as he can, dribbling some down his chin while he props himself up on his left elbow. He studies the bandage on his arm, his brow furrowed.   
  
“I'm sorry, Ser. It was crushed, and we couldn't save it.”  
  
Ser Brynden blinks quickly, tears misting in his bright green eyes. “And my side?”

“You were stabbed several times with a knife. I've been applying a salve to the wounds, and they don't look infected.”

He bows his head until it's almost touching the deck, and his voice is quiet. “My sister?”

Devan shakes his head, because although he's unclear on what happened to the queen, he's certain if she was still alive when they left she wouldn't have been for long. And then he remembers that he's not supposed to know who this man is, or that he has a sister, or that she was queen of the ruined city. But he seems alert enough now to deserve some sort of explanation for that. “Ser, my father and Lord Tyrion and someone named Bronn -” and he notices that Ser Brynden's blackened eyes widen in surprise at the last one - “put us on this boat and told me to sail away. And they told me that you are Ser Brynden Stone of the Vale and that you fought with us for King Jon in the north. I know that's probably not the truth, but they said if I wanted to keep my head I would have to make you believe it. There's a fleet of ships a league and half out from us, and I don't think I can avoid them. So I would be really, really grateful if you could  _be_ Ser Brynden of the Vale, at least while they inspect us, or barring that unconscious until we're past their line.”

“Your father is Ser Davos?”

Devan nods. 

“I'll take the latter.”

And with that, he slumps back down, closes his eyes, and pretends to sleep. 

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

Jaime wishes he really was unconscious again, instead of contemplating his circumstances and listening to the steady stream of increasingly alarmed commentary from young Seaworth. Twenty ships turns out to be forty, and then perhaps fifty, and by the whelp's estimation they are all exceedingly fine ships and well-appointed and unmarked and perhaps heavy laden. 

Jaime – Ser Brynden, he supposes, he will have to call himself even to himself – wishes he could bring himself to care about the fleet bearing down on them, or his wounds, or the fact that his brother seems to have blithely taken even more of his body, his whole forearm, in some insane effort to conceal his identity. 

He wishes he could care that Cersei isn't with him, but if he's honest he feels just a tiny bit of relief. He did his best, and it wasn't enough, and maybe it still won't be. But that book is closed, and he feels some slight sadness but not the overwhelming grief he's expected to feel for most of his life on her passing. 

What consumes him as he lays in a bundle of furs in the rocking boat, trying to tune out Seaworth, is that he's somehow lived and still lost Brienne. He went south to be the weight in the scale, the hostage set against Missandei, the only person that perhaps – perhaps – Cersei might care enough to save. And if he died but prevented the tragedy he feared was coming down upon them, it would be an honorable death, worthy of his tarnished knighthood. That all went to shit when he arrived and Cersei had already executed her prisoner and Lord Varys' ashes were burning embers. He went into the fire at Tyrion's bequest, believing that if he could just set off the bells and save what he could of the city it would still be worth it. He'd set the bells to ringing, but it hadn't brought peace. Just a conflagration. 

The conqueror was just as mad as the deposed. 

He couldn't – wouldn't – leave his sister to face that sort of insanity, not without a fight. 

So he fought. And he lost. And now his body aches with each bob on the tide, and he's embroiled an innocent boy in high treason and damned his brother. 

Brienne will think he went back to his sister, and died there. 

He left her harshly, cruelly...hard enough that she wouldn't follow him, wouldn't fight the Starks when he gave himself over to the Dragon. 

She'll make sense of it after, he told himself as he rode. How he gave himself over as a hostage to salvage the city, what he could of her troops. How he needed her not to fight whatever they chose to do with him, needed her to stand back and allow him to be a pawn on the board to buy peace. 

But now there is nothing for her to make sense of, no story of heroism to accompany his untimely passing. 

Just a panicked boy telling him Tyrion and Bronn killed him off with one breath and saddled him with a murky identity with the next. He doesn't understand why they went to the trouble of saving him, or what purpose he can possibly serve when he doesn't know what's happening and can't be himself for seven only knows how long. 

Perhaps forever. 

They could have taken off less of his arm, surely? If they had to damn him to live in the twilight, they could have spared a bit more of his flesh. 

He can hear voices now, the sound of water slapping against hulls, and he knows a reckoning is near. He can hear the fear in the boy's heavy breaths as young Seaworth stands up on the beam to confront their doom. 

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

They break at midmorning to water their horses and fill their skins and eat a bit of dried beef and biscuits so fine they must've been left from Edmure Tully's feast. She comments on them despite herself, and Podrick flushes as he tells her Lady Meera helped him pack their horses and there are dried apples and some oats for porridge for their evening meals. 

She's never seen Podrick look quite so shifty, and it alarms her. She remembers Meera's words to her in the forest and hopes that sweet Pod hasn't put his feelings where they'll never be returned. She wants more for him than to see him pine after a highborn lady who loves a man she can't have, a man who doesn't really even exist anymore. A ghost. 

Brienne loves a ghost. She loved him for years from a distance and for a brief respite she loved him with her whole self, and even though he's only been gone for a matter for hours, she thinks she'll probably never love another.   
  
“She fell in love with Brandon Stark,” Brienne blurts, too worn down to soften the blow. 

Podrick flushes deeper. “I know. He told me.”

“But did she?” She hears the bitterness in her voice and wishes this hadn't come up at all. Meera isn't Jaime. She's almost as angry as sad, she realizes, but she doesn't know if she's mad at Jaime or herself. It was always never going to amount to more than a sweet dream, an interlude, and if she'd expected more she'd been lying to herself. 

“We don't really talk about that,” Podrick mutters. “We talk about swords.”

“What?”

“Our swords. Fire and Ice, Bloodraven's blade and…,” Podrick trails off, and now he's not blushing but blanching and she looks at his hip despite herself. 

“Widow's Wail,” she finishes for him. 

She went back and forth on whether it had been a kindness or a final indignity, but she never had to tell Podrick that Jaime had left them. He'd woken to find his sword – Brienne's sword, before Oathkeeper – gone and Widow's Wail in its place and he'd known. 

She feels a bit of bile rise in her throat and swallows it down, blinks back the tears that threaten to form. 

“Speaking of swords, wrap your hilt.” And with that she goes from grasping Oathkeeper desperately to pulling it from its sheath, balancing it across her knees and fishing in her leather bag for a strip to bind around it. He's never had to conceal his pommel and he has to rip the hem off his spare tunic. He fumbles with it, but Brienne doesn't help. She won't touch that blade again, not as long as she lives. Just the sight of it in Podrick's unlined hands is an electric jolt, and she's glad to see its distinguishing marks disappear under the linen. 

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

“Origin and destination!” The vanguard is perhaps the finest ship Devan's ever seen, lean and sleek and made of polished wood oiled to a glisten, and as it slides up next to them the sail snaps shut with military precision and a line is thrown out. Devan catches it; he can't outrun this ship in a skiff, and even if he could he's surrounded by a fleet of light cargo ships and they're indeed heavy laden but fast and agile even so. They aren't smugglers, or pirates. Not in ships this fine. But these aren't warships, and a military fleet wouldn't fly under blank sails. Some of the sailors wear cloaks the color of the bluest sky, but there are no other distinguishing features. 

“We're soldiers of the north who fought in the Great War. We got cut off from our lines in King's Landing and escaped in this boat. Ser Brynden is injured – we seek only a port with a maester.”

The rough sailor leaning over the bulwark doesn't look impressed as he takes in the furs that line the deck, the Stark cloak shading them from the sun, the bags of provisions. 

“Well appointed for a quick escape. Looks more like an intentional desertion. Who'd you say you were?”

Devan tries to school his reaction but he knows he pales and hopes he isn't trembling. He doesn't know who these men are or who they serve or what he should say. 

“Devan Seaworth.”  
  
“Seaworth, eh?” The man laughs gruffly. “Doesn't sound like a northern name to me.”

Just as Devan thinks all is probably lost, another face appears over the side of the rail and it's a familiar one, scarred and determined and kind. His cloak is finer than the others, an even more brilliant blue, and as he leans Devan notices his clasps depict a starburst on one shoulder and a crescent on the other, and they're finely wrought silver. “Seaworth?”

Devan begins to cry, not out of fear but relief. He still doesn't know who these men are or what they're doing, but he knows he's safe. “Ser Rolland!”

A smile tilts across the weathered, pock-marked face. “You've grown since Dragonstone. Devan, is it?”  
  
“Yes, Ser.” Devan gets his tears under control and he flushes to think that Ser Rolland remembers him. He was just a boy...it seems like that was back before everything terrible came upon them. “I didn't desert my post. My father...the city is chaos. I don't know what happened, they surrendered and then she burnt it all to the ground with her dragon. He told me to sail East, go to Evenfall if I could.”

The grizzled sailer who questioned him guffaws at this, but Ser Rolland elbows him sharply. “We'll send down the hawser. To Evenfall you'll go, but in a faster ship than that one.”  
  
They're going to give him a different boat? He worries that all the jostling won't be good for Ser Brynden, but he grabs the ladder they throw down and climbs it anyway. Ser Rolland helps him over onto the deck and clasps his shoulder in greeting. Devan looks down and over at his companion, who's still curled in the stern and is either pretending to be or actually is unconscious. “Ser Brynden is injured,” he repeats. 

“So he is,” answers Ser Rolland, as his men climb down the way Devan came up. “They'll be gentle enough, and we've healers aboard. As soon as you're settled we'll transfer most of the crew to The Merman's Siren; we can't delay long, we were hoping to reach the city by dawn at the latest. We'll leave a skeleton crew and a healer to sail you onward.”

He looks around at the beautiful carvings of moons and stars embossed into every inch of the railing, and realizes that this ship would be the crowning jewel of anyone's fleet. This is madness. Devan shakes his head. “I can't take your ship, Ser Rolland.”

“She's bound for your father; if he bids her back to her docks, so be it.”

“My father? This isn't his ship.”  
  
Ser Brynden moans as the deckhands clamber back up with him and place him gently on the smooth beams at their feet. Devan takes a step closer to him, willing him to be silent. Ser Rolland nods. “No, Seaworth, this is the Just Maid, and I'm taking her to King's Landing to deliver aid to the troops of the north on the bidding of Lord Selwyn's daughter. We must continue, but she'll have you delivered by mid-morning.”

Devan is stunned. This is grace so unexpected it doesn't feel real. “Can you do that?”

One of the deckhands laughs behind him, and Devan turns. “'e's the master at arms for the island, isn't 'e? If 'e sends you to Evenfall, you go.”

“Evenfall?” It's a moan, gritted through clenched teeth, and Devan leans down and grasps a bicep, squeezing it in warning. 

“Tarth, _Ser Brynden_. We're going to Tarth.”

He smiles cheerfully, even as he hopes no one around them hears the softly muttered 'fuck' in response. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're still reading, thank you! 
> 
> I was a long time book reader, and no matter how much time passed between Thoros leading my favorite team - Brienne and Podrick - out to a tree and any word of their fate (six years), I never felt the need to write my own continuation of it. George is a master, and I can't write with his depth. It's been another nine years since she got down off the tree and found Jaime (still no word on Podrick) , and I'm still content to wait for resolution...for *those* characters. 
> 
> But I couldn't live with Season 8, despite the flawless performances from cast and crew, and retconning it was cheaper than therapy. I tried to take the TV show's reality and springboard from there, but everything is colored by being a book reader first and more passionately. Jaime wasn't Jaime; the Jaime and Cersei relationship wasn't the one I expected it to be. So in that sense, it's the TV characters with some echoes of their former selves. It's the TV show's reality with - hopefully - a bit more depth. 
> 
> It helped. 
> 
> About halfway through this six-month, 80,000 word Narrative Therapy Session, I read the little nugget about Brienne 'sleeping like the happily devirginized' or some such rot, and at that point I was filled with such blinding rage toward the injustice that had been done to characters I loved that only a visit from the ghost of Ser Maynard Plumm could save me. 
> 
> Or something like that. Anyway, it felt like he took over. 
> 
> What came of it is a fun little romp. I laughed a lot writing it and I hope you enjoy it.


	3. Honorable Knights

They ride as hard as they've ever done, continuing on into the night, pausing only briefly to water the horses and take care of their own necessities. Podrick doesn't complain, and he doesn't say any more about Lady Meera or matching swords or – blessed Mother – anything to do with Jaime. He doesn't say much at all, except to mark where they are and note when he thinks they should veer off the road to avoid another party. They encounter few enough of them; the northern troops cut through not two weeks ago, and seem to have left the people of the Riverlands wary of the Kingsroad. 

They break for sleep just north of Harrenhal because Brienne doesn't think she can bear passing it just yet, even at a distance, and hopes it will somehow be easier in the morning. Podrick starts a fire and prepares the porridge while she unpacks their camp and hobbles the horses to graze, and they eat in relative silence. He takes the first watch and she climbs into her bedroll. Exhaustion serves her well; she's asleep in a matter of minutes. 

Harrenhal does not serve at all. She dreams of it all night, the warmth of the water and the chill of the air as she rose from it to confront him. His fevered skin, slick against her breasts as she cradled him. The flutter she felt in her gut when he covered her hand with his own at dinner, the tug of grief as he swore oaths to her in a dark tower. 

The bear, the bear, the bear. The maiden fair, and a wooden sword, and a battered knight with a stump instead of a blade saying he'd dreamed of her. 

When Podrick shakes her awake she's mortified to realize that her thighs are hot and sticky and her body electric. She's become aroused in her sleep by dreams of a dead man, and she tries shift her mind to another track as Podrick settles in and falls asleep. 

She's unsuccessful. Trying not to remember the distant past only makes her remember the more recent one, only makes her recall that first night in her bed when he'd paused with his fingers just over the ball of nerves above her cunt and asked if she'd ever touched herself. And at her mortified nod, if she'd ever touched herself and thought of him, and how he'd rolled the ball between his fingers until she choked out that yes, yes of course she had, that every time she'd touched herself since Harrenhal it had been him, it had always always been him, and then he'd slithered down her body and added his tongue to his fingers and sucked at her until she had to cover her mouth to keep from screaming down the walls of Winterfell. 

And then he'd laid back and said the decision was hers, and she'd sheathed him inside her and pressed her mound against his pubic bone and rocked against him as he kissed her breasts and mouth and neck and panted her name. Her second climax had torn that she loved him out of her throat, and that had proved his undoing. He came inside her, and his cheeks had been wet as she buried her head in the crook of his shoulder. 

And that memory does it, replaces her unwelcome arousal with a more familiar hollow ache that racks her chest.    
  
None of it makes any sense. She knows – has always known – that he loved his sister. But she still believes, despite rampant evidence to the contrary, that he loved her too, at least as much if not for near as long. He only spoke the words the once, in a hushed voice as they sat at the pool in the Godswood and he asked her if he could stay, but she knows they were true. In that moment, he loved her enough to live. The implied promises might not have held, but she believes that he meant them. 

She wonders how he died. She wonders if he thought of her in those final moments, or if when he was with his sister his memory of Brienne was held as distant as Cersei's always seemed to be when the reverse was true. Perhaps he didn't think of her at all, and that should prove he was a hateful man as he claimed to be. To be honest, she doesn't care if he remembered her or not; it doesn't seem to matter. 

She remembers him, and the man she remembers wasn't hateful at all. He was as true a knight as ever lived, and like any true knight he died protecting his queen. He was honorable, and just, and a good man. 

He was snide and cocky and prideful often enough, and flippant and funny and mischievous by turns and at the most inappropriate times. She'd chided his irony and sarcasm often enough and they'd bickered over the stupidest things. Once he asked her to remove half a log because it was just a smidge  _too_ warm and had persisted in badgering her until she'd grabbed the tongs, brought them down on an ember, and then plunged exactly half a log into their washing basin in triumph. 

He'd have been a joy to grow old with. 

Brienne doesn't care that she's crying, can't be bothered to wipe away the silent tears that pour down her cheeks as she stares up into the night sky. 

Wings beat above her head and a bird lands near her horse, sending it skittering despite the hobbles, and for a moment she thinks that perhaps it's a message. But the bird is just an ordinary crow, and it picks at the ground in the moonlight. 

Crows and crones, she thinks. Widow's Wail. Can you be a widow when you were never a bride?

“Shall we dance?” she murmurs, her lips twisting up in a rueful smile. She can hear the ringing of steel on steel as they parry and thrust and deflect, moving with and against and around each other. The devil may care grin on his face after she knocked him into the dirt and tried to drown him and how he shielded her with his body from the approaching party. “I was just chastising my wife.” A bark of laughter escapes her as she mimics his ridiculous and failed misdirection. 

The laugh startles the crow, and it flies off just as the first flush of dawn appears on the horizon. It's time to go. 

She rises and stretches, and then goes to shake Podrick awake, but just as she bends down another memory flashes, one that doesn't involve Jaime Lannister at all. “I can't knight you, but I can teach you to fight.”

True enough, those words when she spoke them, but they're no longer true. And she knows she's riding into a catastrophe, and the man she'd once hope to have at her side is lost to her. She doesn't need a squire, she needs a lieutenant. 

“Podrick! Wake up.” And then she does shake his shoulder, and he mumbles and rubs the sleep out of his eyes and pushes himself onto his elbows.   
  
“I'm awake.”

They eat what's left of the porridge and pack their horses, but she forestalls him before he can mount. “Kneel, Podrick Payne.”

“Pardon?” He's still sleepy, and he just blinks at her. 

She pulls her sword from its scabbard and waits. Slowly it dawns on him, and his face lights up with a joy she's never seen as he drops his knee in the mud and bows his head. 

“In the name of the Father, I charge you to be just,” she begins, and he blinks so quickly at the word Father that she wonders if he's thinking about the father he never knew. “In the name of the mother, I charge you to defend the innocent,” she says, her voice steady, but Podrick looks up at her when she says mother and holds her gaze even though his eyes are swimming with tears and her heart twists. She feels a mother's love for him, and it's only in this moment that she realizes he too feels that depth between them. Her voice breaks a little as she finishes, “In the name of the Warrior, I charge you to be brave. Rise, Ser Podrick Payne, a knight of the seven kingdoms.”

His pride and happiness push back her pain and grief enough that she can summon the will to mount her horse and ride past Harrenhal toward the storm. 

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

He pouts as the healer unwraps his bandages and examines his wounds. 

Jaime Lannister wants to go to Tarth more than anything else in the world; he has dreamed about going there for years, and to be carried there in his Lady's flagship is beyond his wildest fantasies. Jaime Lannister wants to spend a thousand years at Evenfall, grow old there and die and be reborn for ten or a hundred lifetimes. Jaime Lannister longs for the Evenstar's daughter with an ache that goes down to his rendered soul. 

Unfortunately, Jaime Lannister is two days dead. 

There is absolutely no where more dangerous for Brynden Stone to wash up than the Sapphire Isle. The last thing he wants is Brienne wrapped up in their treason, and there's plenty of reason for the dragon queen to go looking for him in his lady's castle. It's disastrous. He can't help the fuck that tumbled from his lips when he learned they were sailing for fucking Tarth on the bloody Just Maid. At this rate he's likely to get the very real and very just and no longer quite a maid who inspired the boat burnt to a crisp for aiding and abetting a traitor. What happens when Ser Ronald or whatever his name was shows up in the Stark camp asking about Ser Brynden Stone's valor during the Great War? It's going to take about twelve hours for the whole story to implode, and that's conservative.

He glares at Devan, who sits quietly in the corner of the quarterdeck watching the healer stitch up the wounds in his side. It's not the boy's fault, but he's the only person available to blame for this shit show so Jaime – Ser Brynden, Ser Brynden, Ser fucking Brynden – allows himself a flush of resentment. 

At least Bronn lent him one of his more accomplished and less unsavory aliases. He knows the broad outlines of which tournaments Ser Brynden Stone has fought in, which brothels he's been tossed out of, and who he might've just taken on as an implacable enemy by merely existing. It's something, at least. 

“Is it true she's Ser Brienne now, since she battled the dead folk?” the healer, a young woman of perhaps twenty, asks apropos of nothing. He flinches, and the needle catches, and she hushes him.

Seaworth answers her, choosing his words carefully. “Since even before the battle. She commanded the left flank and the holdfast during the retrenchment, and after the battle King Jon and Lady Sansa named her Lord Commander of the North.”

“Hmmmmm,” the girl hums, and then switches to unwrapping the bandage on his arm. He's glad he's laying down, because his head spins from pain when she peels the linen away from the burnt stump. He hisses in agony as she pokes at it with a curious finger. “Quiet, Ser Brynden, I'll just be a moment.” She picks at the flesh and he can feel the touch down the sinews of his wrist into the tendons on his fingers on a hand that isn't there. That hasn't been there in years. He never needed to live this pain twice over, bless Tyrion and Bronn. “I'm so proud she's my lady, you know? Some of the old guard were put off when Lord Selwyn let her go with King Renly, and then again when he let her go north. Said she cared fuck-all – oh! Pardon my language, I didn't mean to swear – cared not a bit for the future of Tarth and we needed an heir more than we needed a lady knight. But it turns out they were just scared that the rest of us girls were going to get wild ideas into our heads, like that we could be healers and sailors and shipbuilders all on our own. Turns out we can. And even the grumps don't have much to say anymore, now that every third ship that pulls into port bears tales of Brienne the Blue who commands armies and fights death itself and is loved and admired wherever she goes.”

A flash of pain blinds him, and he turns his head and throws up water and bread onto his shoulder. The healer draws back, shushing him and apologizing and getting a rag to clean the sick, but it wasn't his arm that pained him. It was the knowledge that he left this girl's hero standing in a bathrobe on the cobbles on Winterfell, crying after him. He took her dignity and her innocence and left a hole in her chest where her heart should've been, and now he takes yet more, risking her life with his silence while one of her subjects attempts to heal him. 

It was all for nothing. The city consumed, Cersei, Tyrion...his presence salvaged nothing, he broke her heart for nothing. 

He can't be healed. He's beyond wholeness now, and not just in his arm. His soul is sick. 

He should have died there. He doesn't want any more time or care or safety risked on his worthless hide. 

He's a hateful man. 

The girls bends over him, a goblet in her hand, and lifts his head a bit. He thinks it's water and he gulps it, but it's milk of the poppy, bitter on his tongue, and if she'd asked he would have refused. 

It takes him anyway. 

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

Thirty five barrels, young Karstark reports just before nightfall. They found thirty-five barrels of salted fish, and he's not sure all of it's still sound. He wants Davos to come down to the beach and examine them. 

He's scraped out enough food to feed the armies and the survivors today, but it's meager rations. The food will hold through the morrow and then Davos doesn't know what they will do. Start killing the horses, he supposes. Arya has told him the Dothraki won't, that they'll leave for the countryside before they slaughter their beasts for rations, and if that happens he's pretty sure the Unsullied will riot and kill Jon and Tyrion before the men of the north can stop them. 

They're on a knife's edge. As he picks his way through the stacked barrels, the wood charred by dragonfire, he's relieved to see that the ones they salvaged are safe to eat. Perhaps they can stretch the gruel out to two days. He plans by the hour now because it's all he can do. 

Now that he's down at the beach, he allows himself to look out at the water stretching onto the horizon. It's strange to see Blackwater Bay empty except for wreckage and flotsam; any ship sound enough to sail left yesterday, weighed down with the survivors of hell. 

Did Devan outrun them? Did he make it out beyond the bay?

A flash of white catches against the darkening horizon, and Davos peers into the twilight. Karstark asks if they're done, and he waves him off with a hand. It's white, a sail Davos thinks, and he wonders if they're friend or foe. They're traveling fast on a fair breeze; the deepening night doesn't quite swallow them as a flash of white becomes a fleet twenty ships across and more sails behind. The sails are unmarked but the ships move toward him in an elegant formation, glowing like ghosts the moonlight. They drop anchor two hundred yards out as the Stark troops set to guard the fish mutter under their breath about who and why and what. 

He waits in silence, holding his breath. A small skiff is lowered over the side of the lead ship and begins rowing toward shore. It's nothing more than a dark shape in the murky light even as it draws closer, and he wades out into the surf to meet it, his hand on his sword. A single man wields the oars. The boat is a mere twenty yards away when Davos catches his breath in his throat and shudders. He knows that boat; it bore his son away while the battle raged. 

Pirates, he thinks, knowing what hostages they hold, and a cloud slides over the moon and makes it even harder to see. 

“Hallo,” shouts the man in the boat, steering toward Davos. It's a strange greeting for a foe. “Is Ser Brienne here?”

So they know they have Lannister, though perhaps not what the youth with him means to the hand of the north. 

“She isn't. I'm Davos Seaworth. Who goes there?”

The man laughs, and tosses a rope out before clambering over the bulwark. “Ser Davos, well met. You're a sight for sore eyes.”

The man splashes through the water toward him, dragging the boat in his wake, and Davos struggles to make out his features in the darkness. And then the shadow passes and he sees the scarred cheeks and the black hair tied off in a queue, and warm brown eyes smiling back at him. “Ser Rolland?”

Ser Rolland clasps his arm above the elbow, pulling him close and bumping against his shoulder. He speaks lowly into his ear. “I sent your boy off on the Just Maid.”

“The Just Maid?”

“Lady Brienne's ship,” he mutters, and then he draws back and speaks loudly enough that the Stark troops on the shore can hear him. “I'm Ser Rolland Storm, Master of Arms at Tarth. We had a raven from the Lady two days ago bidding us to sail for the city. We've forty-seven ships full of food and a few,” and he barks out a loud, merry laugh, a sound Davos hasn't heard in days, “tons of spring onions.”

Davos is too dumbfounded to laugh at the joke. “Forty-seven?”

“We've been docked on the north side of the straight since you marched south from Winterfell, awaiting the raven. My Lord always hopes for the best but plans for the worst. Are the docks intact or should we start rowing it in?”

“The docks are full of the wounded,” Ser Davos says. They laid them out there hoping to send them off on whatever ships – and there have only been a handful – were mad enough to sail toward the plumes of smoke and stench of death. 

“You, lad,” Ser Rolland shouts at the troops behind them. Most of them duck their heads, but Benjen Karstark steps forward. 

“Ser?”

“Row out and tell them to drop anchor here and make camp on the beach. Bring what they can; we'll finish up on the morrow.”

“Yes, Ser.” He wades out and takes the line, and then splashes toward the boat. It takes a few tries before he figures out how to heave himself over the side. Ser Rolland and Davos watch as he grasps the oars and then promptly lets one of them go. It floats on the surf and Ser Rolland picks it up, swims to the hull, and pushes it back through. 

“You ever sailed before, boy?”

“No, Ser.”

“Work them together. Hold on. Try not to lose my oars.”  
  
He flails against the surf until he learns the rhythm, but before long he is headed toward the ships and Davos turns to hike back up the beach, the angel of their salvation matching his steps. 

“How does it stand?”

“The Dragon queen is dead. King Jon and Lord Tyrion are held in chains by her troops. They've demanded a trial but there's no one to conduct it; we're doing what we can to hold down riots until a Great Council can meet.”

“And yet somehow you're here, trying to make sense of it all. We're a long way from Dragonstone.”

Years and years, and all the death and sorrow between. He's not seen Ser Rolland since he and Stannis sailed north, hadn't expected him to wash up on Tarth. If he tries, he can remember a conversation at the wall a long, long time ago, when he'd asked the tall woman with Lady Sansa if she'd ever been married. She'd said something about a betrothal to young Lord Caron, before he died young, but the boy's bastard brother hadn't come up. “That's the gist of it. We'd only enough rations for the morrow.”

“The Mother has mercy on the innocent,” Ser Rolland answers, and for the first time in a long time Davos feels a weight lift from his shoulders. 

She does indeed. All is not lost, not yet, not this time. “And on the guilty too, I hope.”

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

When Devan leaves the quarterdeck, Ser Brynden safely unconscious and the healer quiet and chagrined, he sees they've switched out the sail. It's not unmarked white anymore, but azure and rose with glittering stars woven in gold and glistening crescents in silver, a breathtaking sight against the dark wood of the ship even in the moonlight. 

He makes his way over to the sailor manning the boom and sits down next to him. “Why'd you sail unmarked?”

It seems an innocent enough question, but the sailor considers him for a long breath before answering. “Our Lady serves the Starks, and it's not clear they've prevailed. Last any of us heard, they arrested the Snow King.”

That's alarming news. “Arrested him? But why?”

The man shrugs. “Killed the dragon queen, near as I can tell, after she burned the city.”

Devan pales. His father is still in the city. What will happen to him?

“His hand, do you have news of King Jon's hand? Ser Rolland said he was sailing to meet Ser Davos.” 

The sailor shakes his head and shrugs. “Nothing that I've heard, but I'm no toff. You'll have to ask Lord Selwyn when we get to port.”

The man seems annoyed by the questions, and Devan considers a moment before he explains quietly, “I'm sorry. Ser Davos is my father.”

The sailor grunts, but reaches under a cloak and fishes out a small bottle of rum, uncorking it with his teeth. He takes a long swig and then passes it to Devan. “To the father's swift justice,” the sailor says under his breath, and Devan echoes him. The rum is hot on his throat, a sharp burn instead the gentle warmth of ale. He chokes a bit but swallows it down, and they pass the bottle back and force in silence. 

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

“I swear to the stranger, that man is insane but I think he might be a genius.” Arya and Davos are standing on the hill overlooking the camps, feeling as well rested and calm as they have in weeks, watching as the blue and black cloaks haul their wagons full of bread and cauldrons toward the mass of refugees camped outside the gates. 

Ser Bronn leads them, has insisted that they go in pairs, the soldiers of the north and the sailors of the Stormlands, to remind the people that there is still order and aid and something approaching unity. He advised the men to dispense soup in the name of King Jon of the North and Ser Brienne of the Stormlands. Ser Rolland countered that he would only allow them to speak on behalf of the seven and not his liege lady, and they finally compromised on 'in the name of the mother' before setting off. 

“Jon says thank you,” she says after the troops move out below them. 

“You saw him? How?”

She shrugs. Arya has ways and means Davos isn't sure he wants to know about. “Delivered his soup and bread this morning. He's depressed and horrified, but he was grateful to hear you're keeping the peace and about the ships from Tarth.”   
  
Davos nods. He isn't sure how Jon had it in him, to slay his queen and lover and the last member of his father's family, but he's grateful all the same. 

“Lord Tyrion asked if you thought your son made it out to sea safely.”

He knows he did, but Davos feels a flush of alarm. He believes Arya is safe, but he knows she has reasons to hate Lannister and it was treason. And Tyrion will need to be more careful, if he's not to endanger Davos and Devan as well. He shifts uncomfortably, the lie a blade poised above him. “I do. Ser Rolland aided him.”

She studies his face carefully, smiles softly. “He's your child, Ser Davos. My father would have sent me away as well. Any father would've.”

He nods, relieved she only seems to perceive his natural concern for his son and his guilt for saving that one boy at the expense of someone else. She's full young to understand a parent's concern, or empathize with it; Ned Stark must've been a wonderful father to have a legacy so lasting. 

“I had a raven from my brother this morning. They'll cross the fork today, and our uncle Edmure's joined them.”

He's relieved to hear it. The food will go a long way toward maintaining the fragile peace, and though he's grateful for Yohn Royce and Ser Bronn and Ser Rolland, they all look to him and Davos has never wanted to be in charge of anything, let alone the destruction of King's Landing. The rest of them can't get here fast enough. 

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

They smell it halfway out to the city, a low cloud of smoke and ash and death that has settled over the landscape perhaps as far west as the Isle of Faces. They stop their horses at a shallow pool and wet linen towels to tie around their noses as they ride. “We'll have to pace the horses better.”

It takes them five hours to travel a much shorter distance. The horses can't move as fast in the heavy air, and they're forced to break their canter with long stretches of brisk walking. She can barely remember her optimism of earlier that morning, the briefest absence of grief; the smoke brings with it a foul wind and the cavern in her chest begins to yawn. She wonders if she's inhaling Jaime on the wind, if he's nothing but dust in her lungs. 

She wonders how something so alive could ever die. It doesn't seem possible, if she weren't choking on his ashes. 

She wonders how she's supposed to school herself to not crave death as well, to live out her years in this gray twilight of having been known and then lost it. It was so easy not to want when she didn't know what she was missing. 

That's what it means to lose your innocence, she thinks. To know your own despair, your own lust for death. To grieve. That's what love does. 

She doesn't cry, doesn't feel like crying. She feels dried out, like a husk of a person going through the motions. Riding toward the burning city because it's her duty. Duty she can do. Living...perhaps not so much. 

It's in this empty, silent state that they reach the outer perimeter of the encampment, and there are few healthy men around the fires, just scores of the wounded and burned and crippled, some more severe than others. They're being tended by supply boys and squires instead of fellow soldiers. She stops her horse, and Podrick pulls up too, and they take off their helmets and stare silently in horror at the Northerners. It's worse than she thought, worse than she feared. 

Someone stands to their feet at a fire, leaning on a crutch with both legs bandaged. He shouts “Ser Brienne!” in greeting, and then the boys stop pacing and snap to attention and the wounded begin to stand. More shout her name until it's a cheer, until everyone that can is chanting it and some that can't get to their feet are on their knees and some that cannot rise at all are fluttering their hands from their stretchers, and she's stunned. 

They must  _really_ be desperate if they're chanting for her. 

She tries to ask one of them a question, but their cries drown her out. Helplessly, she looks to Pod. He deliberates for a moment, and then he pulls out his sword and waves it. The chants die off, enough that she can shout. “Where is Ser Davos?”

“In King Jon's tent with Lady Arya,” someone calls back, and then they're all buzzing again, talking to each other, and she hears her name on a hundred lips even so. 

“Thank the Seven for that,” she says, motioning Podrick to ride ahead of her and hopefully deflect most of the attention. It doesn't work. They continue to buzz, and occasionally someone cries out her name in herald. They can't reach the tent fast enough. She dismounts, throws her reins at the nearest available person, and pushes past Ser Davos and Arya, who've come to stand outside and greet them, thundering into the tent and wishing the cloth walls could keep out the sound of her own name on the wind. This is ridiculous. 

She hears Arya greeting Podrick, marveling at how fast they travelled, hears his preening, “It's Ser Podrick now, and we left them above the Trident two days ago. We only barely stopped to rest.”

Ser Davos ducks into the tent, followed closely by the younger pair. She takes a deep breath. “Ser Davos, Lady Arya...what is happening out there?”

“You mean the chanting?” Arya leans against a tent pole, examining her fingernails with a strange little smile on her face, and then pulls out her dagger and begins to pick at her thumbnail with it. 

She doesn't answer, just looks at Arya blankly, but the girl won't meet her eyes. Podrick finally answers for her, “Yes, that.”

Ser Davos suggests she take a seat, so she throws herself into the nearest available and belatedly realizes it's Jon's chair, she's sitting on his throne, but before she can rise Ser Davos continues, “Just sit. Did you get both our ravens?”

“We did,” Podrick affirms. “But we split from the party just after yours came in.”

Ser Davos nods, motions for Podrick and Arya to pull up chairs. He does, but she just stands and continues messing about with the dagger. Brienne wishes she was small enough to disappear in to background that way. She isn't. “We've had some help from unlikely quarters since then.”

Brienne shakes her head, stops him. “The wounded are being tended by boys, Ser Davos. Are there no able-bodied men left?”

Arya sniffs. “The men are all down at the gates, feeding the people of King's Landing, else they're working on the rebuilding efforts.”

She feels some small bit of the coil of tension release as she realizes that at least in this way, it's not as bad as she feared. Perhaps a bit better than she hoped, if things are that much under control at this point. But if they're that much under control, why are the wounded chanting her name like she's come to save them?

“Who's leading them? Lord Royce?”

“Lord Royce is loading the refugees on the docks, the worst wounded, onto ships bound for the Fingers at this point,” Davos explains, stapling his fingers on the bridge of his nose and measuring her from across the table. “You're leading them.”

“I'm not.” This is patently ridiculous. She's ridden hard without rest, and she feels hollow except for the horror of whatever this is, but she doesn't have time for it. “I just arrived.”

“Ser Bronn of the Blackwater,” Davos begins, watching her carefully. Her eyes widen slightly before she can school her expression, but Podrick sucks in a loud gasp and Ser Davos smirks slightly. “Your _agent_ in the city, and Ser Rolland Storm,” and at this name she nods, because she expected _him_ , but not near this quickly, “Are feeding the people of King's Landing food we hauled out of your ships early this morning. So if you ask the men outside who's leading them? You are.”

“That's insane. They're my father's ships. And Ser Bronn? You let Bronn command the northern forces? Are you mad?” Her voice has risen an octave and it's perhaps a touch too loud because Podrick and Arya are both shushing her. 

“They needed a hero, Ser Brienne. And you drew the short straw. Would you like to visit the Dothraki I acquired by borrowing a horse?”

Brienne shoots her a black look, but Arya smirks in triumph. They're both being fucked with the same pole. 

Podrick snorts. She wonders darkly if you can unmake a knight. 


	4. Sapphires & Scapegoats

His dreams are wild. There is a bear in a pool, holding him closely. Brienne disrobing during the summit at the Dragonpit and bidding him to take her against the tent pole in the full view of the War Council. Podrick in a gold dress on a northbound ship, telling him he's always known Jaime is his father. He is riding toward a dragon in his armor and then he is naked and drowning in a pool of sapphires, crushed under their weight. 

The ship pulling into dock, shuddering against the lashing as the gangplank is lowered, brings him back to something approaching consciousness. He tries to sit up, finds he can't move, and panics. The pain is gone but he's immobile. And then he remembers the milk of the poppy and understands he's drugged, laid out on a stretcher on a table, and bound for Tarth. 

The thought doesn't make him retch, so that's positive. He cracks open his eyes and sees the healer cleaning her instruments in a basin and young Seaworth standing in the doorway rolling his cloak nervously between his fists. He approaches the table cautiously. “We've arrived, Ser Brynden.”

He tries to speak and finds his voice doesn't quite work. He tries to repeat his name and slurs it. Better, perhaps, to not speak. 

He hears silence hush over the vessel, the white noise he wouldn't otherwise have noticed ceasing. Devan goes rigid, clutching his forearm. Boots echo up the plank and across the deck, and then there's a flash of brilliant blue and rose gold armor and a shock of hair, pale silver and straw, on a man so tall Jaime knows him instantly and surely. The healer skitters to her feet and curtsies, “My Lord!”

“Lady Storm. The ship was spied from the lighthouse at Gael's Cove. Lewyn tells me,” and at this, the Evenstar turns his attention to the table, appraising them carefully. ”I'm told you bring word from Ser Davos at King's Landing.”

She's a  _lady_ ? Married to a  _bastard_ ? Who was sailing to a war zone as  _medic_ ? What sort of place  _is_ Tarth?

Jaime tries to acknowledge the man from his stupor but can't even lift his good arm more than a few inches. Devan bows low. “My Lord. No word, Ser, only...I'm Devan Seaworth.”

He's ashamed, Jaime realizes. Ashamed to have been sent away from the battle, even with such cargo as his useless – but possibly still valuable – ass. The boy believes his father sent him away to protect him, and perhaps that's true. It makes more sense than someone – aside from maybe Tyrion – thinking he deserved saving. 

“Queen Daenerys burned the city, My Lord. After the bells rang out in surrender. I suppose I came with word of that, but your men tell us she died and King Jon and Lord Tyrion were arrested, and they _weren't_ when we left...”

So Tyrion was in chains. Disappointing. Not surprising. More importantly, was anyone looking for him? And if they were, would they look for him here?

“We've just had a raven from Ser Rolland,” he pauses to nod at the healer, for no apparent reason, “and your father is alive and holding the peace. Lady Sansa Stark has sent a raven of her own, calling for a Great Council to convene and decide the fate of the city and Lords Snow and Lannister. Lord Tyrion has ascended to the Rock; both of his siblings were killed when the Red Keep collapsed.”

Ser Brynden, Ser Brynden, Ser Brynden. He repeats it like a mantra in his head, holding on to it, and feels his wayward muscles slump in relief. Brienne is safe, so long as he is Ser Brynden.   
  
“The Unsullied hung their bodies on the gates.”

They  _what_ ? First, selfishly, he thinks it's impossible. He can't be hung on a gate when he is also here, laid on a table unable to move or speak. And then he thinks of his sister, how fast and hot her comet blazed as she spun across his sky, and of her body broken and strung up and pecked at by crows and he feels tears in his eyes and he has no control even though he knows they're damning. 

“But Lady Arya Stark controls the Dothraki and – as I said – peace is holding.”

“Thank you, Father,” Devan prays aloud, expelling a breath of air as he releases his grip on Ja – Ser Brynden's – arm. 

“And your knight, Seaworth? He's injured?”

He's not Devan's knight. He thinks Devan might be Ser Davos' squire and that he's seen him trailing after Podrick. He's someone's squire. Not Ser Brynden's. 

Devan doesn't correct him. “Ser Brynden Stone. Someone brought a sword down on his arm, and he's been poked a few times. I...couldn't leave him behind, my lord.”

The healer cuts in. “He gulped the milk of poppy, but he'll be fine with a maester's care. He was alert and answering questions before he snatched the vial out of my hands and knocked himself out. I sewed up the wounds, and someone cauterized the arm; it's just a matter of keeping infection at bay at this point.”

Well that's not really how it happened, is it? He'd thought it was water, and that little cup was really more of a goblet than a vial. But right under the stone he rolled, unable to defend himself.

“Excellent work, Lady Storm. Since I'm afraid I won't be sending the Just Maid out again until I receive word from your husband, please join young Seaworth and I for a midday meal. Meanwhile, we'll get Ser Brynden to a maester while he's still an exemplary patient.”

“Well, Lord Selwyn, Rolland got his way,” she laughs, brushing past them. “I'm stuck here after all. Come, master Seaworth.”

Devan pats his shoulder awkwardly. “I'll check in on you soon, Ser Brynden. Rest well.

He wonders if he'll ever really rest again. They leave. Men in blue cloaks come to carry him off the ship and up winding cobbled streets to the castle on the hill. The sun is blinding. He's flat on his back; he can see almost nothing of this journey. 

Of all the ways he ever thought to come to Tarth (and he has fantasized often, and well), he never imagined this one. For the first time since he woke, he thinks he might not be the noose around Brienne's neck, the great proof of her treason. No one is looking for him. No one thinks he survived. 

Which means neither will she. And that thought is a weight pressed against his chest so heavy it takes his breath away. She is either safe or lost to him, one or the other. Not both; it will never be both again. 

And here he is, alive and damned to live with it. 

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

Arya has gone to pace between the camps; Davos' lack of reaction to this indicates that it's routine. He departs as well, off to rustle up soup and bread for her and Podrick. Podrick stares into the distance, opening and closing his mouth like he wishes to speak but can't find the words. She sees this in her peripheral vision; she's picking at a flaw in the desk's surface, smoothing it with her thumb, and trying to wrap her head around where they stand. 

She's a knight. She came to do her duty. 

She thought that meant protecting the innocent. Quietly, with determination and fortitude and a sharp blade. Not loudly prancing about camp like some sort of savior and allowing them to cheer her. She's comfortable with the former but the latter sends chills down her spine. She long ago accepted that there's no way for a woman so big and strong and unwieldy to be invisible, but she does her best to blend into the background. 

Arya, with her ironic quip about the horselord army, has boxed her into a corner neatly. If anyone flies even more under notice than Brienne, it's Arya. If anyone is more uncomfortable with being singled out, observed carefully, lauded...it's Arya. And yet that slip of a girl has submitted to leading an army she doesn't understand in an effort to save her brother. Cousin. Whatever he is to her now, he's kin and she loves him. 

Sansa would want her to save Jon, or make the attempt at least. And Jaime...Jaime gave his life for this, for the people in the city and the troops on the ridge and his brother. 

She knows what he would expect of her, what his legacy demands.   
  
“You know we're going to have to leave this tent after we've eaten, right Ser?”

Five minutes of gaping like a fish and that's the best he could come up with? She twists her mouth into a frown and glares at him. “Yes,  _Ser Podrick_ , I've come to terms with that.”

He just accepts her anger, nods at her. “They couldn't follow anyone better. Begging your pardon.”

“You're not helping, Pod.” She runs a hand over her face. She still feels hollow, despite her frustration. Frustration seems to be the only emotion she can feel. Her grief has turned to rage and there's no battle to fight. She needs a few hours of sparring, but that would be a luxury they can't afford. He opens his mouth again and she cuts him off sharply. “And if you say Ser Jaime would want me to do my duty, so help me I'm going to cut you down where you sit.”

“I wasn't. I wasn't going to say that at all.” He swallows and reaches across the table, puts his smaller hand lightly over her knuckles. She doesn't snatch it back even though she wants to – she forces herself to allow him to show this small comfort. “I was just going to say, Ser, that you won't be alone. I'll stay with you, whatever comes. We'll do this together.”

Her first thought is 'of course you will' but then she realizes...it's no longer foregone. He's not her squire; she undid that just before dawn, in a small clearing off the Kingsroad. He's no longer pledged to follow her wherever she goes, shadowing her to the far reaches of the kingdom. He's a knight in his own right; if he wanted to turn his horse and ride out of the city and never look back, it would be his prerogative. And perhaps his pleasure. 

He's staying because he believes in her, in what she has to do and why she has to do it. He's staying because he's her kin, a little less than a son (perhaps) but more than a brother. He's staying because he loves her in the same way she loves him, with fierce protectiveness and determination to see her do and be her best.

It's not what she wants, not right now. She  _wants_ Jaime. But she has Podrick, and apparently her father. And somehow knowing that helps her face that she's also got the entire army of the north and the remaining population of King's Landing. 

Davos bustles in, holding two bowls of soup and a loaf of bread. “See what we've got here? Only the finest Tarth onions for my lady, cooked with a bit of bacon and some salted herring we fished out of the bay.”

He laughs lightly as he says this, and Podrick laughs with him. She manages a crooked twist that might resemble a smile. It's not as if she goes around beaming at people on her best day. 

_They've seen me beam, but you only get knighted the once._ No one expects her to be ebullient on a regular basis. She hopes. 

The soup turns out to be quite passable. Her stomach doesn't revolt at it. 

“So. Ser Bronn. What happened there?”

Davos is a terrible liar. His smile fades immediately, and his eyes are suddenly fixed on Podrick's sword and the wrapped hilt, which he surely isn't actually curious about. 

“Said he was your agent in the city.” 

“More like Tyrion's,” she snorts between bites. 

“Said he met you at the siege of Riverrun with your horses,” he shrugs, looking up at her again. 

She's forced to admit that this is true, and nods as she chews. She tries not to think about how she's never credited  _Bronn_ with it. It was  _Jaime_ who sent him to meet them on the river with their horses. It was  _Jaime_ who packed a handful of gold coins in her bag for their journey back. It was  _Jaime_ who rescued them. Bronn just held the reins. 

“Sure he did,” Podrick says, putting his spoon down for a moment. “He was there when we left King's Landing, too. Gave me Lord Tyrion's axe.”

She's forced to admit that's true as well. Not out loud, but to herself, if she's being honest. 

“Truth be told, he's been an asset. As you might've noticed, we're short a few leaders. Arya's been to see both Jon and Tyrion, I don't know how, and the latter swears by him. We've got to...somehow...”

He trails off. She nods. They've got to come through. She understands. They all do. The question is how. 

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

Mercifully, Jaime manages to lose consciousness again while he's bustled through the castle and checked over by the maester, and this time oblivion is a blank, restful void. 

He wakes much refreshed and able to move his limbs around, or at least what's left of them. A grizzled old maester bustles around him, checking his bandages and speaks in a low, soothing tone, telling him he's going to be okay. 

He supposes everyone thinks if you haven't got a hand what good is a forearm? Except he was still pretty keen with his elbow, and now he can feel that the tendons and muscles which allowed him that little control are gone too. 

And for what? So he can live out his years in hiding, a dead man either way? So he can be an albatross, dragging down whatever ship tries to bear him?

Surely Tyrion doesn't expect him to go on. Not like this. 

He doesn't want to live in the twilight, for all he thought his gold lion days were done and over. 

He's glad when the man leaves. 

He props himself up on his elbow, looking around the room. It's a bedroom, spacious and well-appointed; he rests on linens the color of the sea, and the bedcover at his feet is bright magenta wool, finely woven, embroidered around the edges with crescents and starbursts. The furniture is finely made, carved out of the same dark hardwood as the ship that bore them. Two small glass-windowed doors lead to a balcony with a view of the straight. 

It's a state bedroom, meant to house a visiting dignitary or fellow lord. Jaime has stayed in half a hundred rooms like it, though only a handful so warm and welcoming. 

He doesn't understand why Ser Brynden Stone, who is barely a person at all and even then a bastard hedge knight, would deserve such fine treatment. It alarms him.

But not as much as the door opening, or the shadow that falls as the Evenstar steps through it. 

Once upon a time, in a land far away, as snow fell by a pool in a Godswood, Jaime had spoken his deepest dreams aloud. How afterwards, after the wars were done wrenching them all apart, he'd throw himself on his knees at the Evenstar's feet and beg his daughter's hand. How they would sail for Tarth and never look back. How they'd raise twelve children and call all of them Galladon, even the girls. They were drunk on life and lust and gratitude, but even then she'd turned maudlin, poked holes in his wildest fantasies. Said she wasn't formed to be a mother, broke down in tears when he pointed out what a marvelous job she'd done with Podrick and if that wasn't motherhood, what was?

“Perhaps one or two,” she'd finally agreed, swishing one of her pale long-fingered hands through the water. “ _If_ there's an afterwards. But we could never call any of them Galladon. I think that might break my father's heart.”

It was a nice memory, if you left out the part where he broke hers instead.

He blinks stupidly at the man he once thought to sway with his charm.

“Welcome back to the living, Ser Brynden. I sent your squire off to rest – he seemed to need it.” He pulls a chair to the bed and folds himself into it in a way that is painfully familiar. Lord Selwyn is tall, but not as tall as the Hound. Perhaps as tall as his daughter, and a little leaner through the shoulders and hips. But he's less forbidding than she is, with deep lines around his eyes that belie a man prone to mirth, and a smile that comes more readily to his lips. His eyes are a pale grey-green, the color of a calm sea, easy and kind. 

His ease draws something like the truth out of Jaime. Or at least as close as he can get to it. “I acquired him lately; he's spent most of his time with his father, and most of the journey fretting over his fate.”

Lord Selwyn hums in contentment and relaxes even more, propping his elbows on his knees. “So I gathered. I know his father a little; I trust him. My daughter knows him better; she trusts him as well.”

“Ser Davos is an honorable man, a good one. Those are rare enough in this world.”

“Indeed,” he agrees, but there's a reservation in it. “My daughter, Ser Brienne -” He pauses, assessing Jaime's reaction, and too late Jaime realizes he's shown recognition and perhaps he shouldn't have - “Serves Lady Stark.”

Jaime nods. 

“I do not serve the Starks,” he says, and there is steel behind his voice. “I will lend aid where I can, and council when I'm asked, but I do not serve them.”

Who do you serve, he wants to ask, because to his surprise he wants to know. And more: why do you serve it?

“You shall have meat and mead at my table, Ser Brynden, and all the hospitality due a fellow knight and a friend to Ser Davos, but if you're to stay here as an honored guest you need to know; I do not bend to your masters, and I will not raise my banners to save your King.”

What sort of man could raise a woman as fierce and bold and breathtaking as Brienne? It was a long-asked question, and now he had an answer. 

Something of the fire in Lord Selwyn's voice kindles something like in Jaime, and he draws himself up and smirks. “I have no objections.”

An eyebrow raises. The Evenstar thinks he's given in too easy. 

He waves the bandaged stump in the air. “I'm in no condition to row myself away if I did.”

The man laughs like Brienne, a delighted bray. To his surprise, the sound doesn't grieve him or rack him with guilt. It sounds like sunshine, like gold, like hope. 

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

Once they're past the encampment, on the outer edges of the band of refugees, the greetings become less effusive and Brienne begins to relax just a little. These men are busy running lines of soup and bread, triaging the wounded, and they don't stop and stand and cheer her as she and Davos and Podrick weave their horses through the crowd. They notice her – the ones in black shout, “Ser!” and “Glad you're here” before resuming their tasks. Perhaps the ones in blue stare a little longer, having seen her not in a long time or never at all, but even they just call out “A fair wind, my lady” and “Tarth!” and continue where they left off as soon as she nods in response. A few of the younger northern lads herald Podrick as well, and he blushes and smiles and waves and it's charming and sweet and she can't help but be glad to see it. 

There are thousands of people on the plain before the gates, and the walls are in shambles. It takes them a long time to weave their way through. Despite the desperation and the squalor and the stench of smoke and death, there's order. No one riots; if there are scuffles, they're put down quickly by the people themselves and not the soldiers and sailors who serve. To her left, the rigid, austere lines of the Unsullied stretch toward the Dragonpit. 

They too are not rioting. Somehow. But that is a more fragile peace, held on a thin string by Lady Arya. 

Davos explains that their lines reach from the gates to the southeastern edge of the Stark camp; they control the city, and seem to have contempt for its survivors, but they've allowed them all through. Though they keep their weapons raised, they haven't used them since their queen died. 

He doesn't say, 'was murdered', but it hangs heavy and unspoken. 

“Ser Brienne, m'lady!” She turns to her right, finds a balding man with a slight paunch in a blue cloak hailing her from a few yards away, waving a torn loaf of brown bread in the air, smiling broadly. “It's me, Phaidrig!”

Seven help her, Phaidrig Keelwright of her memory is a willowy spotty boy of twelve. When she was eleven, she accidentally broke his arm while they were sparring. She wasn't allowed to spar with him again; you can't plane a smooth curve out of a big beam if you don't have good arms. 

She smiles. It's a real smile; no teeth, but she feels it reach her eyes. She even lifts her hand a few inches from the pommel of Oathkeeper, though letting it go makes her feel bereft. He seems to have forgiven her for cutting short his dreams of being a knight, seems happy enough to call her Ser instead. 

A commotion to the front of their horses draws her attention, and her hand back to her sword. Ser Bronn is shoving his way through, and he looks  _furious_ . His brow is drawn down, and though she's only met him a handful of times she didn't know he could look so bleak. The man that stumbles behind him seems confused, apologizing profusely as they pass, and though she's never seen his distinctively scarred face she takes in the crescent and starburst at his shoulders, the rose gold plates edging the padded leather doublet, and she knows him for Ser Rolland by his armor. 

Bronn sees where her gaze falls and waves his arms to get her attention before taking her horse's bit in hand and beginning to push against it. It strikes a wrong note in her – she looks at Ser Rolland again, who bows in greeting. “My lady Tarth.”

She hears Bronn's hiss under his breath, the “Podrick, fall back,” and instead of acknowledging her father's hand she digs her heel into her horse's side and tugs on her right rein to wrest the bit back, turning a black look onto her sometimes ally but never  _friend_ . “Desist, Ser Bronn,” she snaps. “What is the meaning of this?”

He pauses for a moment too long. “Nothing, Ser, but have you seen the wells? They're just below that ridge.” 

He points over her shoulder, but she doesn't turn to look. She shakes her head, more in confusion than denial, and then remembers herself, shifts in her saddle. “A fair wind, Ser Rolland; many thanks for your speedy service.”

She's about to introduce him to Podrick, tries to catch the lad's attention. But he's puzzling out Ser Davos, who – she turns again – is staring off into the distance, his lips thinned and his face white, until he realizes they're looking at him. He nods slowly. “The wells. I didn't think, Ser Bronn. To show them the wells.”

She is just about to follow him because it's Ser Davos, after all, and he wouldn't dissemble, but something about it all just seems off so she follows his gaze and looks out over the crowd and up. 

The East gate is still standing, a small squadron of Unsullied in formation below it. And above it, where the half-collapsed wall meets the tower, two shadowed forms hang suspended on poles. Crows flutter around them, picking at the tattered flesh. 

A man and a woman. Breeches and a dress. 

The din of the crowd around her grows distant and echoing. From a thousand miles away, she hears Podrick's grim question, “What is  _that_ ?”

She'll recognize later that Ser Davos and Ser Bronn would never have answered his question with the truth for all the gold that once lined the rock and she'll be grateful for it. But Ser Rolland doesn't know he shouldn't answer; he sees where she's staring and though he looks pained for the savagery of it, he's innocent of the blow he doesn't mean to deal. It strikes just the same, perhaps harder for how little it's blunted.   
  
“That, my lady, is the queen and her brother. They demanded a head on a pike, and at least they weren't alive to object to it.”

To his credit, Podrick nods quickly and pivots both their horses in one fluid motion, drawing so close to her side that his stirrup brushes against hers with each stride. 

She feels Davos close in on her left. Her eyes swim with tears but they don't fall, just hang there suspended. She thought she felt hollow before but now she feels nothing at all except fragile like glass, like she's going to shatter as the horses trot their way back up the hill, like everyone can see the abyss where her heart used to be through her transparent skin. She sets her jaw so tight she fears her teeth might break. She forces herself not to look over her shoulder; she thinks that if it wasn't for their reactions, she'd never have seen anything of her lover in the half-pecked skeleton on a pike, bloodied smallclothes hanging limp from the bones. She'd never have known, and that would have been a mercy indeed. 

But she does know. She knows that he isn't the dust in the her lungs, the ash on the wind, but a feast for crows, strung up for a city of the bitter vanquished to spit at and mock, the scapegoat for all of their sins. She knows that the body she rocked against hers, the flesh she once nursed back to health, skin she's lathed under tongue and breath she traded gasp for gasp...the body is a jumble of broken, sun-ripened bones above the city he loved, rotting next to the shade of his cruel sister. 

She thinks she must not draw breath as they canter back into the camp; she is gasping when she slides off her horse and stumbles back into the tent, and then the tears begin to fall as she unbuckles her belt and kneels in the dirt with Oathkeeper pressed to her forehead. Her tears are silent but her gasps are loud and she heaves again and again, curses the fate that makes her grief come out as sickness. It's pathetic. A man would stem his tears; a man would do his duty without breaking down. A knight would...a knight would…

A knight would kneel next to her in the dirt, his own face streaked with tears, and reach an arm around her shoulders. He would mop up the pool of sick with a rag, and toss it in the corner, but he would cry just the same. And he would lean his head against her pauldron and say over and over, “I loved him, too. I loved him.”

Maybe not every knight. But Podrick is a knight, and that's what he does.

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

“Were you not _thinking,_ you daft cunt?” Ser Bronn pants, putting his hands on his knees and staring up at Davos as he tries to catch his breath. “Taking her down to the gates, of all places!”

Davos is not just rumored to be a terrible liar, he actually  _is_ a terrible liar. It's not news to him; the truth is he forgot because what did Brienne care if Euron Greyjoy and Cersei Lannister hang from the gates? But that isn't the fiction Tyrion perpetrated with a brick and a crushed gold hand, and it's not the fiction he told the Unsullied to spare it being himself and Jon in their places. It had been a relief for both Bronn and Davos when they learned the Unsullied had unearthed the bodies on Tyrion's intelligence and what they planned to do with them. It meant no one who knew Jaime Lannister in life would be looking closely enough to realize that wasn't his corpse, and their protests had been half-hearted at best. 

Even if it really had been the Kingslayer beside his usurper sister, Davos thinks it was still the right decision. If he'd been dead, and innocent life could be spared by making a mockery of his decaying corpse, Davos would elect for the pole. He thinks every true knight would. 

But if it were Marya strung up, and he was forced to witness it? Well, that would be a different story. There were rumors of the nature and extent of the relationship between Brienne of Tarth and Jaime Lannister at Winterfell, and Davos spent one particularly memorable evening in their intimate company, but the truth is he hadn't really realized just how deep it went. 

He sent them to Tarth, he realizes, Devan and Ser Jaime that was. And Bronn – who he's starting to suspect knows the Lannister brothers better than perhaps anyone – didn't stop him. 

This is a mess. Ser Rolland is confused and trying to make sense of his lady's reaction, looking over Bronn's shoulder in an effort to see into Jon's tent. Whatever is happening, they're quiet in there. Nothing but breaths and murmurs, thanks to the Seven. 

“Is anyone with Lady Brienne? I demand -” Ser Rolland begins, drawing himself up and taking on Davos, who shakes his head grimly. 

“Ser Podrick is with her, they'll be out when they're done.”

Bronn laughs as easily and quickly as he grew furious, “ _Ser_ Podrick? Did you knight everyone in Winterfell while you were at it? Look, do you want to tell him or should I? Because if we don't, then she'll have to.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Tell me what, Ser Davos? I understand both of you may have traveled and fought with her, but I'm Tarth's Master at Arms and I have a message from her father and I demand you let me see her.”

“Not now, Ser Rolland,” Davos snaps. He rarely snaps, but he's reached his limit. It seemed so simple at the time. Put Devan on a boat because they were all going to die, and who cared why or with whom he was sailing? But now he's not even sure if Brynden Stone is alive or dead, for all he believes Devan is safe on Tarth, and he knows he can't assuage Ser Brienne's grief by telling her it's not Jaime Lannister up there on the pole because if anything she's a worse liar than he is. 

Jon's life depends on how Davos tries to untie this knot. And he doesn't even know where to start. 

“Look, I've been in this stinking shit-filled city for the past six months,” begins Bronn, and Davos is pretty sure it's a lie. “All I know is Ser Jaime Lannister gave up being Lord Commander of the Kingsguard and went north to try to win the hand of Our Lady Tarth, and he got at least as far as knighting her. And now the man who loved her is strung up on a pole because he had the courage to come back and ring the city's bells.”

Seven help him, he  _knows_ that's a lie, almost snorts at how preposterous it is. 

Except...is it?

He remembers glancing over at them at the feast, seeing Tyrion's head on his brother's shoulder and Podrick's head on Brienne's as they all leaned into each other around the table and laughed. It'd given Davos a sharp pang of homesickness. They'd been the closest thing to a happy family in that room, and it made him miss his own and long all the more sharply for a world where they could be with each other again, and all the wars were over. 

He remembers them on the battlefield, all of them save Tyrion, the way they fought instinctively in a triangle formation and protected each other's flanks. It had been a beautiful, terrible sight to behold, the dance between them at the edge of night. 

He remembers Lannister trailing behind her like a puppy while she oversaw repairs in the aftermath, and the strange little smiles that passed between Lady Sansa and Brienne and Tyrion whenever the topic of Ser Jaime staying in Winterfell came up. 

Perhaps Ser Bronn isn't lying at all, or only a little, because as he considers it Davos realizes it's not a preposterous leap. 

Although it seems a pretty ham-fisted way to indirectly inform the lady's father that she had a suitor.

Ser Rolland is speechless for a moment, and then repeats the information he's just been given back. “Ser Jaime Lannister was paying court to Lady Brienne?”

Bronn shrugs. “Far as I knew, yes.”

Ser Rolland looks to Davos. 

Davos considers whether or not the truth lies in what he'd been told or what he's seen with his own eyes. And he sides with the latter. “I have no reason to think that's false.”

“Is she _alright_? Had you even told her of his passing?”

No, he hadn't. He'd been so obsessed with not mentioning the untimely death of Ser Jaime Lannister, lest he slip up, that he hadn't said anything at all. 

“Mother have mercy,” Ser Rolland breathes. 

“Give me a minute,” Ser Bronn says, “I'm going in.”

Davos thinks he's probably screwed this up enough for one day, so he lets him. 

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

Her eyes are closed, the flood of silent tears just a damp pool on her thighs and at the wrists of her tunic. Pod's hair is against her cheek, her neck crooked against his shoulder, her palms grasped around the hilt of her unclasped sword while his sheathed one is tucked between them.

“Well, don't the two of you make a pretty picture, the Mother incarnate and her warrior son. I suppose I should congratulate you both on your knighthoods. Welcome you to the sacred brotherhood and all that rot.”

She untangles herself from Podrick, sheathes her sword, sighs in disgust and exhaustion. 

“Piss off, Bronn. Leave us alone.”

“Oh, I will,” he promises, leaning against a pole and crossing his arms and legs and staring down at them as if he's settling in for a long stay. “Just as soon as you're briefed on a couple of things. Go ahead and cry if you must; he weeped over you often enough and forced me to watch.”

She tries to glare at him, but she doesn't have it in her. Podrick lifts his head and squares his shoulders as if he's preparing for a fight, but she brushes his hand from his hilt and shakes her head slightly. “Get on with it.”

“Firstly, I was spared a few moments with Tyrion _before_ his arrest...but after the battle had commenced. He sent his brother into the city to make sure they rang the bells in surrender, to _prevent_ what happened.”

“He was with Tyrion?”

“Was. Tyrion released him before the battle, which is at least part of the reason our little lion's in chains.”

“Oh, Jaime,” she breathes, because she thought he'd rode off to save Cersei, and despite his betrayal she'd loved him still. But he'd gone to Tyrion, and then...he'd been sent off to die for it, to die for the city he'd been willing to sacrifice his honor to save even as a youth. 

Bronn is not going to give her any time to process this, clearly, because his voice is crisp as he continues, “Second. While he was found in the keep, near his sister, he'd already been mortally wounded by a sword. I know what people will whisper, but he knew as far back as when you were both at Winterfell she'd lost her hold on reality. Knew that when he rode north to be with you Cersei tried to have him killed. He'd made his choice, and what happened in the keep doesn't unmake it, and that choice was you.”

“But the baby,” she breathes, because...  
  
“What baby? The one that seven months on still didn't show? Crazy bitch was menopausal, not pregnant. Did you hear what I said? She tried to kill him, and he knew it.”

She nods. She heard him, she just doesn't understand it, not really. His words are somehow soothing her, but it is profoundly weird to be comforted by  _Bronn_ .

“Finally, I told Ser Rolland he was paying suit to you in Winterfell and you're mourning him.”

She doesn't hear that at first. Or rather, she does, she just refuses to believe that it actually came out of his mouth. Because then she'd want to kill him, and she might not be able to restrain herself. A small choking sound comes from Podrick. 

“ _Why_?”

“Because it's true, and for once the truth has fewer unintended consequences than any lie I could quickly devise, and I think it will help Tyrion.”

She doesn't think it's quite the truth. He loved her, that's true enough, in his way. In another world, where things hadn't been so complicated, they might have been happy, made a life together. But that world was not this one. He'd spun ridiculous fantasies, but he'd never been serious. It was all flippancy, all twelve children and girls named Galladon and chariots pulled by unicorns. She'd laughed, but she hadn't really believed him. “I don't see how lying to Ser Rolland and by proxy my father is going to help Tyrion.”

“Lady Brienne,” Bronn begins, rolling his eyes, “the man jumped into bear pits and in front of the dead and had his bloody hand cut off just so he could fuck you into a mattress. What part of him panting after you is a lie? Course I didn't put it that way, did I, on account of sparing your father.”

The noise that comes out of her is a strangled squeak. 

“Either way, he's dead and I'm sorry. We were all fond of him. But of everything in the world, he loved you and his brother the best. We can either pretend that's not true, or you can go along with it and suddenly what both of them did before and during the battle makes sense...not as statecraft and all that bullshit, but as...a big old family of toffs, doing stupid things for love and knightly virtues.”

She doesn't like this  _at all_ . It feels like a lie; it feels like a posthumous betrayal. His words when he left her were clear, and they were harsh, and they sundered any belief she had that he loved her half so much as she loved him. It was one-sided, or at least lopsided. 

But can she argue against his best friend, and by proxy his little brother, if it's the story they want to tell? She could, she supposes, make sure that everyone knows she was nothing more than the Kingslayer's whore, his bedwarmer, just another woman to fall at Jaime Lannister's perfectly sculpted feet. She could...disappoint her father, his men...in just that way. 

She looks over her shoulder at Podrick. He meets her gaze, sure and steady, even though his eyes are red from crying, and nods slowly. “He did, ser m'lady. Love you. That's not a lie. I swear it.”

His hand goes to the hilt of his sword, still wrapped in white linen, and she watches his fingers clasp around it. She holds Oathkeeper just that way, like it's anchoring her to the world. 

Jaime did love her. And Podrick. And Tyrion, and Bronn, and probably Cersei as well, despite himself. 

Widow's Wail. Can you be a widow when you've never been a bride?

Apparently you can mourn like one. 


	5. The Griffin of Winterfell

The servant who comes to empty his chamber pot early the next morning returns as quickly as he departs, announcing that he's meant to help Ser Brynden down to the solar to break fast with the Evenstar. It sounds like an order; Jaime doesn't protest, allows himself to be dressed in a dark navy morning robe and soft leather slippers, allows the man to prop him up as he limps down a wide hallway. He's only gone forty yards, passed ten or fifteen closed doors, before he wonders how much further he's going to have to go – he's weak, and in pain, and doesn't really want to be alive for all the trouble it will cause, and walking is a chore. He's relieved when the man guides him through an open door into a tower. Glass paned windows look out over a bustling little city and a marina and the fabled docks of Evenfall, a bird's eye view. The Evenstar sits at a council table, partaking of his breakfast, a handful of scrolls at his left hand. 

“Good morning, Ser. Please – sit and eat.”

There is a plate next to Lord Selwyn, the remnants of eggs and salted pork belly and a bit of cooked kale. The same food is put in front of him as soon as he chooses a chair across and a little to the left, along with a fresh pot of tea and a small glass of juiced apple. 

He discovers he's famished, and begins to eat heartily. 

Lord Selwyn chuckles. “Your appetite has returned; a good sign. I think you will live after all, Ser Brynden.”

“Thank you, my Lord,” he replies, pausing with his fork buried in the eggs. “Down to your care and attention, no doubt.”

“That's too much credit. Young Seaworth did very well getting to you to Ser Rolland, and the maester tells me Lady Storm did an excellent job tending your wounds. We're all invested in your recovery, Ser.”

You wouldn't be if you knew me for myself, he thinks. Kingslayer. A man without honor, or a future. Breaker of hearts, despoiler of innocent maidens, a man who failed spectacularly not just at defending, but also at surrendering, a city. 

Twice over. 

Killed his king. Check. Failed to defend his queen. Check. Saw the city burned to ashes twice on his watch. Check. 

Seduced the Evenstar's daughter and betrayed her. 

Checkmate. Salvation is a bitter pill. 

The eggs have turned to ash on the back on his tongue, even though he knows them to be well-prepared and the best meal he's eaten in ages. He gulps at the juice, but it's dust and acid and loss. “My thanks, Ser.”

Lord Selwyn considers the scrolls at his left hand, sips at his tea. He examines Ser Brynden from across the table, couching his curiosity in concern for his health. Perhaps it is, in part. But Lord Selwyn looks older in the harsh morning light, more careworn. More circumspect, and more burdened. Jaime recognizes the way the Evenstar holds himself, understands it. The night has brought unwelcome news. 

He pales. 

“You have news from the city?” He forces himself to take another bite of the tasteless eggs.

“Do you have children, Ser Brynden?”

Jaime's not sure how to answer. He nods, slowly, as he chews...and decides to tell the truth. “I had four.”

“Had?”

He nods again. He had three, once, he's sure. Maybe a fourth; the child had existed to him, at least, even if it was a phantom. He'd expected Cersei to be slow and placid, heavy with child. She hadn't been. It hadn't really mattered, at that point, seeing as they were going to die. But now he realizes if there was a baby she lost it long before it ever showed. 

“And a wife?”

He shrugs, wonders how that will be taken. Truth is, he never had one. The mother of his children wasn't, could never have been. And the one he wanted...well, in a different world, she might've been. But that world isn't this one. “I lost them all.”

The children, the lovers. His sister, the anchor. His soulmate, the knight. 

“Master Seaworth tells me you're something of a messenger between his father and Lord Tyrion,” Lord Selwyn offers, and Jaime wonders at the man's openness. He would have interrogated a man who washed up on the rock, but the Lord of Evenfall doesn't press him. “He's too young to realize what he's described is a spy.”

Jaime can't help it, he laughs. Because that describes Bronn, perhaps, and sometimes Tyrion, but he's always been pants at subterfuge. “I was just chastising my wife” flickers through his memory, and how quickly that particular attempt to deceive had blown to hell, but fuck it...it's still one of his favorite memories, gasping for air as she held him under the water with her sword to his neck. “Hardly.”

“But you're a hedge knight, and you rarely stay in one place for long. Despite that, here you are. A valuable asset, I'd say, to Ser Davos at least.” Lord Selwyn unrolls a scroll, scans it, and then places it in the center of the table. 

Jaime reaches across the table with his left hand, takes the scroll. Realizes he doesn't have his prosthetic hand, or a working stump, just a bandage tender to the touch. He can't unroll it with one hand, fumbles a moment before giving up. He tosses it back across the table and tries not to sound angry. “I can't read it, my Lord.”

“My apologies,” answers the Evenstar, and he sounds genuinely sorry as he takes it back and smooths it flat against the table. He reads it precisely, in a low voice, “King's Landing fed, my thanks to you. Your daughter arrived safe; is grieved at the situation but resting. Peace is fragile, but holding. We await council. SDS.”

He pauses. Jaime sets down his fork in relief, waits with his hand resting on the table. 

“Postscript. The Father bless you for caring for my Devan, Lord Selwyn. Ser Rolland assures me he is well. Is Ser Brynden mending as well? Davos.”

He nods. He's mending, despite himself. He wonders if it's worth the effort, but he's doing it all the same. 

“I had ravens this morning from Ser Davos and Ser Rolland. I've had nothing yet from my daughter. I do not ask you to betray your secrets, or whatever pacts you made, but as one father to another,” Lord Selwyn shrugs, a line of worry creasing his brow, “You were in Winterfell?”

Slowly, he shakes his head, trying to think of of all the places Ser Brynden Stone might've been, and where and why. It's a small mercy that he knows who lent him the identity, knows him well enough to retrace his steps in broad strokes. “Wintertown, a few times, but I was never invited to sup with the Lords in the keep.”

This is only half a lie; even as himself, his presence had only been barely tolerated. Jaime Lannister hadn't been a Gold Lion in Winterfell, but half consort to the Lord Commander of the North and half hostage to the Starks. A man divided, while his siblings and their wars tore the seven kingdoms to sunder and dragons woke the stone. 

Moments of bliss were carved out of ashes and dust, out of the ruins of the north. Whoever prevailed in the land of sun and sand, they would eventually turn back to the snow and slush beyond the Neck. Would it be Daenerys, Queen of Dragons, who wanted – and would eventually have – his head on a pike? Or would it be Cersei, who would demand Brienne's to sate her endless want for ascendency?

Either way, they were damned. Either way, there had been no place for them in the world waiting to be born, not together. One of them would go to the block before it was over, it was just a question of which of them and when. 

He can't help it. He bows his head low over his breakfast, shaken by the impossible riddle he was tasked to puzzle out. He did his best, didn't he? Even if it didn't amount to much. 

“Even so. Ser Rolland's missive,” Lord Selwyn says, rolling the scroll in question between his fingers, “Was more concerning to me. As a father.”

Does he stop breathing? A chill crawls down his spine, sending shocks of alarm to nerves long since severed. He tries to school his expression into one into something resembling an indifference he doesn't feel. “My Lord?”

The smallest twitch curls the corner of the Evenstar's mouth, just for a moment, and though it's involuntary it betrays that he believes Brienne will be okay, whatever the news, for it was a flash of amusement. He looks for a long moment at something over Jaime's shoulder, considering, and Jaime resists the urge to turn and follow his gaze. 

“Tell me, Ser Brynden, what you know of the situation between my daughter and Ser Jaime Lannister in Winterfell.”

“The Kingslayer?” He's not sure why that's where he chooses to deflect, except that it's an old echo in his pit of self-hatred, and reflexive. For a moment, he wonders if Lord Selwyn knows, but if he did this wouldn't be a circumspect conversation over bacon; he'd gut him like a fish and toss him over the balcony, Jaime's sure, if he knew anything close to the truth. He chooses his path carefully. “You mean that he knighted her?”

“That's old news, even here in the hinterlands. I'm asking if you heard...Ser Rolland says he was paying suit to her, and she's taken his loss hard. And I'll be frank with you,” he raises his teacup, tilting it in salute, “this is the first I've heard of it.”

A thousand lies, a thousand denials are on the tip of his tongue, but for once he thinks of someone other than himself, hears only that Brienne has taken his loss hard, and he wants only to fly back to the city and throw himself at her feet and assure her he isn't dead, and he did love her, and convince her to dry her tears...and probably let her beat him to a pulp, because after the grief he's pretty sure she'd feel anger. He would do all of those things, if only it wouldn't damn her and Tyrion and himself and probably Ser Davos and Lord Selwyn and maybe the entirety of Westeros. 

He swallows down the bile in the back of his throat at the thought of what he's done, the enormity of his guilt. He can't fix this. He's not even sure he can make it better. “I think, my Lord...I think...”

He doesn't care that he's betraying himself, stumbling over his words. He takes a deep breath, stares down at the bandage on his arm, tries to think of what would have been obvious to the more observant northern soldiers. “I think it was common knowledge there was  _something_ between Ser Brienne and the Kingslayer, but only your daughter can tell you the extent of it. I understood them to have a long history together, going back to the Wars of the Five Kings. She vouchsafed his honor before the Dragon Queen, and he swore himself to fight for her. The elder Lannister remained in Winterfell rather than departing with his brother; I cannot say what happened between then and now.”

He really can't; he's certain he would choke on the words if he tried to utter them. 

Lord Selwyn seems to accept this as the extent of his intelligence on the subject; he taps the scroll on the table, twice, and then places it back in the pile of correspondence, pours out more tea and takes a long sip of it. “Thank you.”  
  
“You should ask her, Ser. If it's true...she could use a father's wisdom, I'm sure.” He thinks it's what Ser Brynden Stone would say. It's certainly not what Jaime would say in these circumstances, but he thinks it's a passable response. 

Lord Selwyn chuckles slightly, closes and his eyes and shakes his head, then looks directly at him. “Have you met her, Ser Brynden? My daughter?”

“I've seen her,” he answers, honestly enough. Inside out, pore by pore, to the depths of her soul. And then also, “She wouldn't know me.”

“And you don't know her. If you did, you'd realize...it's no use asking after anything unless she wants to tell me. I expect her raven today; I doubt she'll even mention it.”

He doesn't answer; how could he? Because of course she won't mention it, she's Brienne, stubborn and self-contained. And undoubtedly heartbroken and ashamed of what passed between them.

He lays his fork and knife across his plate; there's still a bit of bacon left, all of the kale, but he's no longer hungry. 

“I'm sorry,” he says aloud before he realizes he's spoken. He didn't mean to voice that, doesn't know what Ser Brynden has to be sorry about. Even as a condolence, it's misplaced. I'm sorry your daughter has horrible taste in men, doesn't communicate with you because she doesn't want to disappoint you.

Lord Selwyn hums, pushing the scrolls to the side. Changes the subject. “That wound giving you trouble?”

He looks down at four inches of arm he's just lost, the place where the hand hasn't been in years. It's a clean cut, well cared for immediately after, tended by a healer and a maester. As amputations go, it's not his worst. 

He'd still rather be back in the mud and the shit, feverish and dirty, if it meant Brienne would be the one cleaning it, tending it. Her calloused hands, warm and gentle, were a miracle even then. Instead he's wrapped up in Tarth wool, slippered and well-fed and coddled, while she sleeps in a tent outside a burning city and undoubtedly eats little so that others can have more. 

“It'll take some getting used to,” he chokes out, the emotion he's been holding in rolling over him like a wave. 

Lord Selwyn sees it, rises from the table, invents some excuse to leave his own solar. 

Jaime rests his forehead on his left fist and cries for everything he's done, and everything he failed to do, and everything that's lost to them in the new world being born out of smoke and sand. 

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

Slowly, they begin to rebuild. The people of King's Landing take stock; those that have family elsewhere in better circumstances depart. The ones who have no where else to go make their way back to the city, begin to pick through the rubble and ashes, move back into the areas that are still sound. 

Brienne organizes repair parties. She did this at Winterfell, has been doing it for the past eight weeks save ten days of hard travel. She doesn't, however, leave the Stark camp again; this time she assembles the parties and tasks from a distance, relying on Podrick – who does brave the gates, and survives it – and Bronn to be her eyes in the city. 

No one questions it. No one mentions Jaime again, and she's grateful. 

On the seventh day after the battle, Lord Robyn Arran arrives by boat from the Fingers. He brings another twenty ships of relief. He's young and cocksure and prances around like a grave little Lord, but he defers to Lord Royce and is gracious to the rest of them. The Vale takes to repairing the docks in earnest, and Sers Davos and Rolland continue to marshal cauldrons and fret about supplies and feeding the multitudes. 

The bodies are burned. The wounded begin to mend. 

The abyss in her chest doesn't fill, but she learns to carry the weight of it. Her stomach constantly rolls in discontent, so she eats sparingly; that's well enough, as despite the massive amount of aid they're still stretching to feed so many people. 

The eighth day brings a raven from her father, replying to the one she sent thanking him for his rapid and generous relief, apprising him she was well and the city was in order. He assures her, apropos of nothing, that he loves her and he's proud of her, and informs her that young Seaworth and a Ser Brynden are good company. She doesn't know how to puzzle that out, so she asks Davos. He looks shifty as he explains that he sent his son and one of Tyrion's hedge knights off on a boat bound for Evenfall during the battle. 

Brienne thinks it was a spectacularly stupid idea, but then again she wasn't there, so she doesn't tell Davos that. He's extraordinarily lucky Ser Rolland found his boy bobbing at the hook. 

On the ninth day, the convoy from the north arrives, weighed down as they've been with Lord Edmure's train of beef packed in barrels of wine. Arya goes out to meet them, and Ser Davos and Podrick decide to accompany her, but Brienne waves them off. She moves down to the end of the table to work on her lists and buries herself in her work. 

It takes them longer to return than they should, and when they do it's a much larger party than Brienne expected. She hears the cheers echoing up from the edges of the Stark camp, and then it grows to a dull roar. She squares her shoulders and steps through the doorway of the tent. Sansa and Brandon and Arya ride at the front, nodding at the troops, and behind them Ser Davos, Podrick, Lady Meera and her father. And yet further, to her surprise, Samwell the maester and Gendry the smith and an enormous smiling youth mounted on a stout mule who waves to everyone. Something about him strikes a chord of familiarity, but she can't place him. A pony pulls a cart with Lord Brandon's chair in it. 

Arya swings down from the tall white mare that chose her, hands her reins off, and helps Brienne unload the chair. Podrick and Lady Meera unfasten Brandon from his saddle and Podrick helps him down into it as the rest of them turn over their horses and shake the dust from their cloaks. 

“Hello again, Lady Ser.”

The fat boy is grinning at her from ear to ear like she should recognize him. 

“Who're you?”

“I'm Hot Pie, aren't I? Gave you the bread shaped like a wolf when you were still out looking for Arry. Caught up with them at the Fork, found Gendry there. We've come home, Lady Ser, to help rebuild the city.”

“He's alright,” Arya interjects, just as Brienne places him. That was years ago; she's surprised _he_ remembers it. “He's with me.”

“Where's your uncle?”

She rolls her eyes before ducking in, motioning for them to follow. “Making sure his dinner doesn't get mixed into everyone else's. We can start without him.”

Lords Royce and Arran arrive after their hike up the hill; Lord Robyn goes to speak to his cousins in a quiet voice. Brienne is surprised to see the light embrace he gives Sansa, and more surprised that she returns it with something approaching affection. Lord Robyn bows low to Brandon. “My Lord, we saw you riding. The saddle is a marvelous invention!”

A ghost of a smile flitters across his features, and he waits for the chatter to quiet a little before replying, “It was Lord Tyrion's design; he gave it to me many years ago, but I've had little opportunity to make use of it until now.”

At Tyrion's name, the chatter dies completely and everyone looks on edge. They find their places around the table; Brienne sits between Podrick and Ser Davos, her pile of lists in front of her, and waits. 

Long moments pass. They look between each other. Finally, Ser Davos breaks in. “Alright, who's in charge?”

Sansa shrugs, looks at Bran, who shakes his head slightly. Royce looks to Lord Robyn, who is staring at either Brienne or Davos, it's hard to tell. 

“Lord Reed?” Arya speaks pointedly to Lady Meera's father and he nods. 

“I'll lead this meeting; no more than that. I've no intention of staying in the city longer than it takes to convene a Great Council.”

Brienne feels more than sees the small glance that passes between Podrick and Lady Meera at this proclamation, and wonders at it. They spent a day and half riding together; surely they can't be that invested in each other. 

There are nods of assent, a few murmured ayes.   
  
“Who do we have, and how many more do we need?”

“You and...Sansa? As the Lady of Winterfell. That makes two from the north. Robyn and Lord Royce from the Vale, our uncle from the Riverlands. He said Lord Blackwood is making his way to join us,” Arya counts off on her fingers. “That's six. Ser Davos, you hold a keep in the Stormlands, so that's seven. Ser Brienne -”

Brienne cuts her off. “I'm no lord, my lady.”

“Fine, you or your father. Tarth makes eight.”

“We need fifteen,” Lord Reed nods. 

“Sam?” Brandon has spoken. Sam shakes his head vigorously. “You're the last of the Tarly's.”

“I'm a maester and a man of the night's watch. I can hold no titles.”

Lord Royce, ever practical, snorts. “You can until we're done with this. That's nine.”

“Lord Gendry?” Davos nods to the smith, who looks gravely back. “I know you were legitimized by Queen Daenerys and she is...dead...but we are all prepared to press your claim. Truth is, no one holds Storm's End. The Florents would like to, but it's in shambles.”

Everyone nods; just like that, Gendry is made a lord twice over. How easily they make and unmake them here in this tent; the question, Brienne thinks, is if the kingdoms will accept what they're doing. Only time will tell. 

“Theon's sister sails to meet us, but it will take her a week at least. That's eleven, if we're prepared to wait,” Sansa explains.   
  
“Not sure we have a choice,” says Davos. “Any news from Dorne?”

“We're hoping Lord Quentyn will arrive by the end of the week, but it hasn't been confirmed.”

“Assuming he does, we're still three short. And no one from the Westerlands or Crownlands.”

There is silence around the table. Who do they know, and more importantly, who do they trust? Finally, a cheerful voice speaks up from behind Brandon's chair. “What about Lord Westerling?”

It's the baker. They've come to the point that bakers give advice about Great Councils and think nothing of it. Brienne's not sure whether that's a sign of progress or a portent of impending doom, but it's  _strange_ . Still, young Lord Arran – of all people – nods vigorously. “I knew Rollam when we were small. He was at Riverrun, wasn't he, when...er...what I mean to say, I suppose, is that he served your brother well. A good choice. I'll ask him, if you like.”

Lord Reed nods. “We still need two. Any ideas?”

No one offers any. Finally, Podrick – Podrick! - speaks up, carefully and slowly. “It seems to me, that – begging your pardon – doesn't Lady Arya hold the city, so to speak? Can't she sit in her own right, as the head of the horselords?”

Brienne nods, as does Davos. Even Lords Royce and Arran shrug in agreement. Everyone who's been stuck in the city knows how much they owe to her ability to go along with the absurd events of the past two weeks.

Arya looks at Podrick, something torn between a dark glare and profound gratitude. 

And that's when Edmure Tully barrels into the room, sweeping his cloak in a wide dramatic arc and looking around the table at the lack of empty chairs. “Well,  _that's_ finally settled. I cannot believe you haven't been keeping separate lists for your own supplies. Where shall I sit?”

No one rises. His eyes settle first on Gendry, a blank stare that asks why he's still sitting when the Lord Paramount of the Riverlands cannot find a chair. Arya puts it to rest firmly. “He's Lord of Storms End, Uncle, and a Baratheon.”

And that's when he turns to their end of the table, fixing his demanding gaze on Brienne, Podrick, Lady Meera, and possibly Ser Davos. “Well?”

Brienne isn't moving, precedence be damned, not for him. Not ever. He'll have to physically unseat her, and she wishes him luck. Podrick shifts, but she puts a hand on his leg under the table and squeezes it and he too stills. But then Lady Meera begins to rise, and Podrick is on his feet instantly. “I'll stand, my Lord. I'm nothing but a hedge knight.”

She tries to look like she's merely making room as she scoots her chair closer to Ser Davos, so close their knees are touching under the table. She hears the quiet snort of amusement as she bumps up against him, and she notices Meera inches closer to her father. Edmure Tully doesn't seem to notice that he's now alone on the far end of the table and somehow spreads his lanky form into the space and takes up as much of it as possible. “Let's begin.”

“We're just tallying up the Great Council, Tully. Still one short of a quorum.” Lord Reed speaks crisply, far more authoritatively than he's done thus far. 

“I'll appoint a regent on behalf of my younger son,” Edmure responds cheerfully, “and he'll speak for the Twins.”

“You can't put an infant on a Great Council.” Lord Royce is the voice of reason, and they all nod in agreement, but in truth it's not the boy's diapers that count against him. It's the idea of Edmure having a second vote. 

“I don't see why not. We're voting on his future.”

“It's a trial, Lord Tully. Surely we need someone capable of weighing _evidence_.” To her surprise, it's her voice. 

He shoots her a sour look, but then turns to his nephew and nieces. “Ah, that's right, we're deciding your brother – I'm sorry, your  _cousin's_ – fate. In that case, let me make myself clear; I won't support a Targaryen for the throne. Any of them.”

Arya snorts, rolls her eyes. “There isn't a bloody throne, uncle, and in any case Jon doesn't want it. But Brienne's right, our first priority is the trial. We can discuss the future of Westeros once we have both Jon and Lord Tyrion in our possession.”

“Oh, yes, of course, we can't have infants on the council but we can have a teenage girl deciding our priorities. I'm sorry, Arya, you're Lady of what?”

“King's Landing, uncle, and Khaleesi of the Dothraki Army. You might have heard of a small sparring match I had with the Night's King, where it turned out I was the victor. Despite,” she drawls primly, but with a voice full of venom, “Being barely out of my swaddles. I did not ask for any titles or a seat on this council, but I want my brother back. Whatever the cost.”

Edmure goes a bit pale and draws into himself, but he doesn't stop talking in a snide tone of voice. “Lord Snow is a given, I'm sure, but I fail to see why any of us would want the Dragon Queen's hand back. I think we should be prepared to turn Lord Tyrion over to the justice of his Queen's Guard, especially if it means settling this quicker.”

She feels the anger radiating off Podrick, even though he's standing behind her. And she thinks she should speak, as she spoke for Jaime in front of Queen Daenerys, but she can't figure out what to say. Lord Royce nods a little, and Robyn Arran in his wake, and she realizes...they all love Jon, but no one speaks for Tyrion. They're prepared to sacrifice Tyrion.

Jaime  _screams_ at her, in her head, from beyond the grave. Begs her to speak for his brother. She tries to find the words. 

“It seems to me, my Lords, that my brother is the rightful Lord of Winterfell. Bran should sit on the council as the representative of the Starks.” Sansa speaks clearly, carefully, weighing each of her words, and Brienne wonders what she's up to. A diversion? The group is easily diverted, readily agrees. One Stark is as good as another, for these purposes, and it's true that by the northern laws of succession the seat of Winterfell belongs to Brandon. No one's really prepared to argue it, and mainly they're just all glad to have something to agree on. Sansa waits until they've all telegraphed their acceptance before she continues. “In that case, I will sit on the council as a representative from the Westerlands.”

Brienne and Arya understand what she's doing before anyone else does, catch on almost instantly; Arya catches her eye and smiles slyly, and Brienne nods back. 

“You're not _from_ the Westerlands.” Lord Tully looks scandalized and frustrated and a vein is pulsing alarmingly on his forehead. 

“But uncle,” Sansa says sweetly, a small smile playing on her lips that chills Brienne to the bone because a wolf only smiles like _that_ when she's got prey between her teeth, “Lord Tyrion is the last remaining Lannister. And while I may be young and have much to learn, I'm fairly certain that makes _me_ the lady of Casterly Rock. Since my lord husband is currently indisposed, I will speak for the West in his absence.”

“Your marriage was annulled.”

“So Lord Bolton claimed, but I never agreed. How fortunate we have someone with a maester's training, to settle this for us. Maester Samwell? May I sit in my husband's seat while he is absent?”

Sam nods, opens his mouth to speak, but the nod is enough. Lord Reed speaks over him. “That is fifteen. I think we ought to adjourn, get a feel for the situation in the city, and meet again at dinner. Lord Arran, if you'll prepare a raven for Lord Westerling, let's get that off quickly.”  
  
“Motion to adjourn,” Ser Davos interjects quickly, jabs her in the ribs. 

“Second,” she answers reflexively, willing the shitshow to end. It does, in a chorus of ayes. 

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

The morning's breakfast brings fluffy oat cakes, fresh blueberries in thick cream, and a cut of ham. Berries! Devan can hardly contain himself; it's been years since he ate berries. He thinks he might've been a babe at his mother's side. There was nothing so fine at Dragonstone, to be sure, or at Stannis' camp in the north. He thinks Lady Sansa and her ilk might've occasionally procured some small, tart northern chokecherries – Podrick gave him a handful, once – but they weren't round and juicy and sweet as berries should be. 

Tarth's as close to heaven as Devan's ever been. 

Ser Brynden stares at the berries in cream with a sad expression, as if berries themselves could make a person melancholy. Ser Brynden looks sad most of the time; Devan tries not to think about why that should be, and instead concentrates on the missing...part of his arm. Losing a hand could defeat a man; it seems reasonable enough. 

It's more sensible than being sad over berries, seven spare them. The berries are delicious, perfect. 

“I've a raven from your father, Master Devan. For you.” Lord Selwyn, who is big and kind and knowing, slides a scroll across the table.

He puts down his spoon and unrolls the note.

_'My boy -_

_Peace holds. We await a council to decide the fate of King Jon and Lord Tyrion, and the future of the realm. I hope your stay shall last just a little longer before I am able to call you and your mother back to the city. I do not go so far as to hope I will be able to go home when this is done, at least not directly, but I am hopeful we will soon be reunited. The seven keep and guide you until that time._

_Davos Seaworth_

_PS. Your host informs me Ser Brynden is on the mend. A missive from him confirming that would not be remiss.'_

His heart swells at his father's words. They are – or soon will be – delivered. 

He tries to hand the missive to Ser Brynden, who now looks sad at scrolls instead of blueberries. He shakes his head, waves his stump, but Devan isn't stupid. He smooths it out on the table between them, holds it open, so that Ser Brynden can read it. Which he does. 

And then, instead of happier, he looks sad and now worried as well. “Can't write with my left hand,” he mumbles, stirring the blueberries around in his bowl with it like he knows how to use it just fine. 

“You could _try_ ,” Devan says, tries not to think about how it's been _years_ since Ser Brynden learned to compensate and surely he can manage to scrawl some sort of note. 

The man shrugs. 

Now that he's cleaned up, half-healed, he's somewhat recognizable...but no one would ever mistake the gaunt-cheeked man with the deeply lined face, broken nose, and dull hair shot through with silver for a golden lion. Devan thinks that here on Tarth, hidden away, he's safe enough. 

He owes Davos for that, doesn't he? And his brother, and his friend Ser Bronn. 

If it were Devan, he'd want to let them know he was alright. Safe and healing. He looks up at Lord Selwyn, who is watching them from across the table, a small smile playing around his lips. He nods to a small table in the corner, and Devan gets up to fetch a slip of paper and a pen and inkwell and the blotter. He returns to the table, lays his supplies out, and slides his chair closer to Ser Brynden. 

“Here, I'll help. I'll write it out and you can sign, if you'll forgive my penmanship. My father taught me to read, but I haven't had much chance for writing.”

“I'll do it.” He snatches the pen and the paper, but even though it isn't yet curled he fumbles to grasp it with the bandaged right arm, grimaces as he finally pins it with his elbow, his body bowed at a strange angle. His teeth are bared with pain as he dips the pen into the inkwell. Seared nerves and the contortions he's forced into in order to write make it a massive struggle to form something resembling letters as Devan watches over his shoulder.

_'Seaworth -_

_Safe and mending. Do not know what I will do or where I will go afterwards, but my thanks. Good fortune._

_Ser Brynden Stone'_

Devan realizes that Ser Brynden is angry; angry at being wounded, angry at being on Tarth, probably angry at being alive at all. 

How can he be so bleak when they all finally seem to have a future?

He looks up at Lord Selwyn, who smiles gently. “Write your own message, Master Seaworth, and I'll send out both with the next ravens.”

Let it go, he seems to be saying. Devan trusts Lord Selwyn, but he worries about Ser Brynden. How can the Evenstar help him if he doesn't know who he is or why he's so sad?

And how can Devan help a man who doesn't want to talk to him, who avoids him and hides out in his room except for meals?

It's an awfully big burden for a boy his age to bear. 


	6. A Lie Told In Kindness

Brienne's pulled a runner, managed to get out of the tent without anyone noticing. Podrick doesn't know whether to stay and make sure no one notices, or follow her. He cranes his neck, trying to see out a gap in the flap and across the yard to her small sleeping quarters, trying to make out if that's where she's gone, when he feels a hand brush his arm and looks down. There are spots of pink on Lady Meera's pale cheeks and she bites her lip through a smile. “My congratulations,  _Ser_ Podrick.”

“Thank you,” he answers quietly, wondering if his own blush shows. He's used to flirtatious touches and glances from serving girls, tavern wenches, the odd older married woman with a whiff of predator about her. He's not used to such attention from a Lady, and no less one as beautiful and sincere and brave as Meera. 

Being a knight has turned out not to be some magical moment where he's a full-fledged adult and hero, just a long slog though a broken city trying to bring comfort and wisdom to masses of displaced, despairing people who look to him for a hope he struggles to feel. It's not glamorous. He doesn't suppose he's very competent most of the time. He's still taking orders from Bronn and worrying about Brienne and wondering if Tyrion will land on his feet like a cat, and he's been doing all that for years and years now.

But Lady Meera's smile might be the thing that makes it glorious, knighthood. 

“Will you walk with me?” she asks, and he glances over to where the Starks are huddled in a little group. Hot Pie has wandered off to the kitchens to put his skills to use, and Podrick wonders whether by morning all the people of King's Landing will be breaking bread in the shape of wolves. 

Arya has the strangest assortment of people who would follow her to hell and back, have done. He's one of them, he supposes, turning to Meera and nodding, holding the tent flap open for her. 

The sun is blinding, or it might just be the light of the girl beside him. She's not turned out in a silk dress like Lady Sansa, or crisp black wool like Arya. She's not really armored save for leather braces on her forearms, doesn't wall herself off like Brienne. But she's the most beautiful lady he's ever seen in her green linen tunic and leather boots, a finely worked but unadorned leather belt holding Bloodraven's sword at her hip. 

He doesn't really understand why she seems to like him and wants to spend time with him. Lady Meera faced down the Night King, the children of the forest, the dark and cold beyond the wall, all manner of terrible, incomprehensible things. The horror that he faced for a night she endured for months on end, trudging through the snow and slush, her hands too frozen to draw her bowstring. She's beyond his league, even as a friend, but the instant regard between them has endured a few days separation, and she's warm and friendly as she asks questions about the camp. 

“Give me a moment,” he says, when they've crossed the yard, and he ducks his head into Brienne's little tent. She's still got her armor on, but she's stretched out on the furs with her cloak wrapped around her head. It must be stifling.   
  
“It's just me,” he says when she starts at the noise he's making, “You're alright?”

“A bit queasy. I need a few minutes,” she answers, not bothering to uncover her head once she knows it's him. 

“I'm going for a walk,” he tells her, trying to keep the stupid pride out of his tone. If she were in a better mood, he'd tell her who with and how glad it makes him…but she's not. She's as competent and hard working as ever, but now on her infrequent breaks she doesn't wander around watching things, she hides out in her tent and mopes. It worries him, but he's always been told time is the only thing that heals grief, and it's all so recent. 

She mumbles her assent, assures him she has water and bread and she's fine, so he backs out and shrugs helplessly at the concern on Meera's face. 

Meera is smart, too. She asks him immediately about building supplies and how they're repurposing stone and if there are enough masons to make it work. She waits until he answers, until they're cresting the ridge, before she circles back. “You're worried about her, your lady ser.”

He likes that she waited until they were out of earshot, that she doesn't call Brienne by name and draw the attention of the men who are milling past and around them. He likes  _her_ , and it scares him a little. 

“She'll be alright,” he replies, more cheerfully than he feels and then he looks out over the plain at the broken gates and the rapidly decaying skeletons, picked clean of flesh by the birds that adorn them. “They hung his body from the tower. She took it hard, and she's even harder on herself for having trouble with it.”

She looks around them, and then at the jagged stones that form an outcropping a handful of yards to their left. It's no man's land, the space between the Starks and the Unsullied, and they don't wander into it. But Meera scrambles over the rocks, glancing over her shoulder to make sure he follows, and he does. She finds a flat little overhang and sits down on it, crossing her legs underneath her and looking out over the ruins of the city. 

“When I was a little girl, my mother would tell me stories about King's Landing, about the shining city on the hill and the Red Keep and the glittering ladies of court. She called it a nest of vipers, a poison pit, but...I always wanted to see it, just once. And now...here I am. It's not really what I expected.”

He laughs. The walls are rubble, the smoldering pyres of what used to be storehouses sending plumes of smoke from the ruins. “I imagine not.”

“Podrick,” she bursts out, and then belatedly, “Ser. I'm about to tell you something I learned in confidence. But I'm certain you need to know. It's...about Lady Brienne.”

His muscles go rigid. He hopes she isn't about to ask him to betray Brienne. It's a line he'll never cross, not for any reason. 

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

If he makes it up and down the hallway fifteen times, he'll be allowed a glass of wine. He's not sure why he's performing like a monkey just so he can have a bit of Dornish with dinner, but the servant informs him that those are now the terms and he's complying. He's made his twelfth circuit of the hall when Seaworth's door opens, and he ducks into the nearest room lest he be forced to talk to the boy. 

It's not empty. Lord Selwyn sits at the window seat of a lovely, airy bedchamber. White linen curtains embroidered with tiny blue forget-me-nots, so fine they're nearly translucent, flutter in the breeze around the lord's shoulders. He wonders if he's burst into Lord Selwyn's personal bedroom, and examines his surroundings as closely as the man in question examines him as he sprawls against the door in exhaustion. The walls are lined with shelves displaying seashells and rocks and fragile old feathers, the dusty forelock of some long-forgotten steed braided with silk cords, carvings of mostly horses but also a few ships. A tapestry – Florian and Jonquil – hangs on the wall above the bed. Books are precisely arranged in a cupboard next to a small desk. 

He doesn't think it's Lord Selwyn's bedroom. The sheer familiarity of it, despite him never having seen it before, forms a sinking pit in his chest just a moment before the Evenstar confirms it.

“I should quarter you for breaking into my daughter's bedroom, panting and unannounced, but finding me here is no doubt punishment enough,” the lord drawls, the corners of his lip turning up. “Hiding from something? Someone?”

“Seaworth,” he answers honestly, too undone by the knowledge that yes, it's hers, to prevaricate. “Wants me to talk about my feelings. With him. He's all of twelve.”

Lord Selwyn laughs, waves to the other end of the bench. “Fifteen, but I imagine his concern for you is a trial.”

“Fifteen is still entirely too young for a confidant,” he says, crossing the room and arranging his still-tender body on the seat cushions. He glances out the window, sees – to very little surprise – a training yard and some large sturdy wooden buildings. “Your armory?”

“Aye, and the stables beyond. It's my doing, I suppose; her brother's room is across the hall, with a view of the sea.”

That explains a great deal about the development of certain young ladies of the manor, though he regrets the grief clouding Lord Selwyn's voice and wonders if the man would be happier if he wasn't forced to explain his life in such heartbreaking detail to a stranger. 

“Tarth is beautiful.” His voice is quiet, his attention fixed on the stables and the trails leading up the hill into a little stand of trees. He can imagine her there, a girl of six or ten or six and ten, riding a pony or palfrey or warhorse like a bat out of hell with a sword at her side, and he misses her sharply. 

He wonders if Lord Selwyn misses her half so much, and if he does how he lives with the pain of it. 

“Indeed. I've been hoping for an opportunity to speak to you, one on one. I don't suppose you'll want to leave us anytime soon.”

So he's wondering how much longer Ser Brynden intends to devote to mending while relying on the hospitality of the Sapphire Isle. Jaime doesn't know; though he's weak and his wounds are still painful, he could reasonably sail now. He just doesn't have anywhere to go. 

“My lord?”

“Ser Davos has asked for his son to return with the next departure of The Just Maid; we're assembling a few more aid ships and a relief crew. I expect they'll sail in two days, and Lady Storm with them.”

“Ah.”

“If you insist on returning, I'll send Maester Yost with you – but I've been told you're free to recuperate here indefinitely, and I get the feeling it may be better if you don't return to the city just yet, until a more permanent understanding is reached by the council. It's your decision.”

So they're all leaving. He can't hide out on Tarth alone, wearing fine clothes and eating in state and forcing the kitchens to stay open in the master's absence. 

Pentos, didn't Tyrion say? He should go to Pentos. He wonders if Lord Selwyn can spare a boat, what he'll do when he gets there, how he'll make nine gold dragons last for more than a couple of weeks. He fingers the fine wool of his borrowed tunic; he doesn't even own the clothes on his back. 

“You're leaving as well? The morning after next?” 

Perhaps Lord Selwyn will be a bit delayed; perhaps Jaime will have just a little more time to formulate a plan for the future. It's a long shot, but two days...he doesn't know how to disappear, or where to go. 

“I'm not going.”

He pauses mid-fret, looks up at Lord Selwyn, who is looking back at him steadily and carefully. 

“My daughter will be the Evenstar in time; it's the way of things. What's more, she's fought with these people, led their armies – she commands their respect, and I daresay holds their affection. She knows Jon Snow and Tyrion Lannister, and they know her. They don't need some doddering old man coming in to tell them what to do; she's perfectly capable of speaking for Tarth's interests, and I intend for her to.”

A small bark of laughter escapes him, despite himself. It's a combination of things, imagining how Brienne will receive the news that she's to sit on the Great Council and Selwyn's self-description of 'doddering' when he could probably lift an ox and feel just fine after. The confirmation that Brienne didn't get to be the force of nature she is by having a conventional family, which isn't a surprise but is a delight. 

“In the meantime, Ser Rolland is away and will remain so for some time. You can read well enough, if the paper isn't rolled. I was thinking you might want to make yourself useful with the armory lists and managing the schedules, if you've a mind to stay a while.”

Is Lord Selwyn offering him a job? If so, he thinks he'd better take it. He's never really had a job, unless you count presiding over the implosion of the Kingsguard, but he's willing to give it a shot if it means he doesn't have to sail for Pentos wounded and one-handed and short of funds. 

If he's honest, he would shovel the pig enclosures if it meant he could stay here and have news – even truncated and second-hand – of Brienne. Hearing that she survives, that she's well, is giving him a reason to get up in the morning, and he doesn't have many.

“I'd like that,” he answers quietly, scared that if he tries to say more the emotion he feels will color his voice. 

“Then we're settled,” Selwyn nods, and rises to lead them both to dinner. 

The Dornish is freely offered, sweet and tart on his tongue. 

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

Dinner turns out to be exactly the sort of loud, merry affair that Brienne would have dreaded if she'd had the foresight to anticipate it. For all they mocked Tully's concern over his beef, everyone is willing enough to eat it, along with some little marzipan cakes the baker cheerfully announces he sweetened with honey from the medical stores. Lord Arran has produced a barrel of ale, and it flows freely. 

Brienne choked down her plain bread and a few bites of beef, but she doesn't drink the ale, just sips at a goblet of water. 

She's worried as much as grieving, but she hasn't shared that with anyone...not even Podrick. Earlier, when she'd addressed Sansa as “My Lady”, Sansa had smiled a little and shook her head and replied, “It's just Sansa now, Brienne, since you're no longer in my service. We are equally daughters of great houses.”

And Brienne had realized Sansa meant she was releasing her full stop, not just for a few days in King's Landing, and now she's  _terrified_ of what the future holds. What happens when everything is settled in the city and the Starks return north? What's left for her except to go back to Tarth, take up her position as heir as she should have done years ago, and look to finding a husband?

It's the thought of the husband that makes the bile rise in her throat. The thought of laying herself open to a man who isn't Jaime, all in the name of having children she's not sure she wants, and certainly not with some stranger. 

But it's her  _duty_ . 

And she's fresh out of competing loyalties, great quests, wars that won't wait. Her father will be here soon enough, and his troops will be his own, and she'll be nothing more than a great beast of a girl lumbering in his wake, still a freak even if she's now a knight. Maybe  _more_ a freak now that she's a knight, come to that. 

Podrick leans forward to shoot another glance at Meera across Brienne; they're flanking her, but she might as well not be here at all for all they keep leaning back and around to communicate silently with each other. 

She  _likes_ Meera, and she loves Podrick, but whatever is going on between the two of them makes Brienne want to stick her fork in their foreheads. 

Mostly, if she's honest, it's the fact that Podrick seems to be flirting. Something tiny and petty in her resents that, but more disturbingly he seems to have learned everything he knows about it from the two men in his life, which means he's goes at it with the smooth tongue of Tyrion and a longing, puppyish look that he stole straight off Jaime Lannister's face. 

She's wondering how much longer she'll have to sit here picking at marzipan with a fork before she can escape without anyone thinking she's shirking off. 

And that's when Brandon comes rolling up, pushed by Arya. “May we speak? Elsewhere?”

She nods, folds her napkin on her plate, notices that Meera and Podrick rise with her, and she shakes her head. “Privately, Ser Podrick.”

“Podrick too,” Arya clarifies, “Meera already knows.”

Again with the glances between the two of them. Whatever this is, it seems Podrick knows the subject of the impending conversation as well. Brienne has three guesses from whom, two don't count, and they're all named Meera. 

They can't exactly sneak out, but Lords Reed and Royce and Arran don't stop them, Edmure Tully's half in his cups, and Bronn, Ser Rolland and Ser Davos wave them off cheerfully. 

She follows Arya, who pushes the chair up the hill toward the medical tents. A new one's been erected at the outer edge, rather large and rather fine and displaying a flayed man on the flaps, and that seems to be where they're headed. 

“Aren't the Boltons all dead?” Brienne asks.

Arya laughs. “It's Sam's, he took what he could find in the storehouses. Didn't want Gilly and the baby having to sleep rough with bedrolls.”

They all duck inside, and Sansa and Gilly are spread out in the furs talking quietly. Sam sits at a small folding desk with a great huge book in his lap, and Baby Sam is squealing gleefully and running a wooden horse on wheels up and down his back. 

Brienne is forced to sit down on the furs, because though she'd rather stand the tent's not tall enough for her to do so without her head being draped in fabric. Podrick and Meera sit as well, flanking her again, and she wonders why they don't just leave her out of it and find places next to each other. 

No one looks like they're in hurry to speak, now that they've all hiked across the encampment. Brandon is staring off into space, Arya is leaning against a pole with her arms crossed, and Sansa won't meet her eyes. 

Only Gilly smiles encouragingly.

She can't imagine what they're here to discuss. “Well?”

Everyone looks at Sam, who pales and clutches his book tighter. “Me? You want  _me_ to begin?”

“No,” Brandon interjects, back with them again. “Sansa?”

“Alright,” she says crisply, straightening her spine. “My uncle's...flaws...are well known to us all, I believe. He somehow learned that Ser Jaime was with us in Winterfell.”

So it's about Jaime. 

“And...what he was doing there.”

No, it's about Jaime and  _her_ .

Had she really thought she could keep the Kingslayer in her bed for a month and not have everyone from Castle Black to Starfall find out about it?

The truth is, she hadn't been thinking. At first she was just drunk on sunlight and happy to be alive at all, alive and in love and cradled in his arms in the long, difficult days after the battle. And then there hadn't really seemed to be a future to worry about, just more war, and who really cared what  _anyone_ was doing as they all prepared to die all over again?

So no. She hadn't really considered the long-term consequences for once in her life. She'd just been grasping at a much longed-for bliss when it was offered. 

“He's going to tell my father, that's what you're saying. That we – that I...” she trails off, unwilling and unable to finish that, except in her head. Fucked the Kingslayer. She think's that's probably how Edmure Tully will put it, when he's face to face with Selwyn Tarth, and won't that be a treat. 

“Not...exactly,” Sam answers, tilting his book. 

Brandon looks at her with that piercing knowingness he has, and she hears Meera take a deep breath beside her, as if she knows what he's going to say before he says it. “I told him you married in the Godswood under the Old Gods.”

She can't breathe well enough to form some sort of expletive, just stares back at Brandon blankly, trying to process the consequences that will follow  _this_ lie. Her first thought is that they can't do that Jaime, even posthumously; he hadn't married her, hadn't even mentioned wanting to except for his stupid fantasies that night...in the Godswood. 

Where she rode him under the Weirwood tree, even though it was cold and the slush had seeped through his cloak as he lay on the leaves, and her knees were wet and scraped raw by the rocks. 

“We were _alone_ ,” she chokes out, blushing from root to crown. 

Sansa looks victorious, but Brandon just blandly announces, as if to the room, “No one is ever alone beneath the weirwoods.”

Brienne is not sure if someone can blush and pale simultaneously, and she doesn't have a looking glass to check, but if it's possible she's doing it. Because she knew that, didn't she, that Brandon had some sort of tree network, and she can imagine exactly what he must've witnessed. And the embarrassment of  _that_ outpaces her sense that the whole thing is a big shamble of lies by several orders of magnitude. She looks at Sansa when she speaks because she'll probably combust on the spot if she's forced to meet Brandon's eyes, or Samwell's, or...Seven forbid...Podrick's. 

“Whatever stupid things we said, there weren't any witnesses. It's not legal.”

“Yes, well, that,” Sam answers, and then she's forced to meet his gaze. He looks kind and encouraging as he props open the book, sets it on the table, and motions her over. She gets to her feet and looks over his shoulder. 

And there it is, in his big old maester book of maesterly things, the last entry on a page devoted to marriages and births:  _Ser Jaime Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock and Ser Brienne, Lady of Tarth, January 22, Winterfell. United by the rites of the Old Gods of the North, there being no Septon present. Witnessed by Brandon Stark, Lord of Winterfell._

Someone (Sansa) has forged Jaime's signature. There's an empty space next to it, and Brandon has already signed below it. It waits only for her hand.    
  
“I can't do it,” she says, looking at the pen and inkwell sitting helpfully beside the book. They planned this out hours in advance, she realizes. Possibly before they reached the city. “I won't do it just to spare embarrassment, even if it means I have to tell my father what I've done. There's no reason for a lie of this magnitude.”

“There may yet be,” Brandon answers cryptically. “Sansa believes there is.”

Sansa crosses her hands on her lap and looks serious and troubled. “You saw my uncle's reaction when I asked to sit for Tyrion, Brienne. I have not always been a...faithful...wife. I did not love him as a wife should, but...he has been a friend to me, always, and I would not see him sacrificed to bring about a temporary peace. If you sign that, when you sign that...I will no longer be his only family in the world.  _You_ will be his good sister, and  _we_ can be united behind him.”

It's at that point she makes the mistake of looking at Podrick, and she realizes instantly that it was a grave one indeed. Because he looks shaken by Sansa's words, but also hopeful, and Brienne  _knows_ how much he feels for Tyrion. He would not ask this of her for anyone else's sake...but he will for Tyrion. He does ask it, if silently, with the hopeful look on his face, the admiration he's pouring onto Sansa from a distance. Podrick loves Tyrion. 

Jaime loved Tyrion. 

She bites her lip, reads the impossible words again, looks at the pen. Asks herself as honestly as she can if Jaime would want her to sign it. If Jaime would want her to lie. 

He'd lie for Tyrion in a heartbeat. She knows the answer before she asks the question. 

She takes the pen, dips it in the ink, and signs her name quickly in the empty space for it, before she can talk herself out of it. And then she stares at it for a bit, committing it to memory, the way the words all flow together on the parchment. She knows it isn't really Jaime's hand, but someone (Sansa) has done an excellent job at mimicking it. Down to the little flourish on the S in Ser, which was once elegant but for some years (since he began writing with his left) has been spiky and awkward. 

She runs her hand through her hair, rubs hard at the kink in the back of her neck, continues to stare at the page as the ink dries. In a few moments, it is done. She is wedded and bedded and a widow, all at once. 

She chokes out a strangled laugh that sounds more like a sob, even to her own ears. “Can you be a widow if you've never been a bride?”

“Yes,” Podrick answers instantly, and then blushes as everyone turns to him. “I mean...you were, Ser. A bride. We all thought so.”

It's a pretty elegant way to say he fucked her into a mattress while they all pretended not to know, but she finds she prefers it to Bronn's description. 

“You know, Podrick, you're not the one who's going to have to inform my father of these events. After the fact.”

And then he blushes, and looks away, and at least she has that small victory. She has no idea what to write to her father, not the slightest idea where to begin. But she's certain there doesn't exist a raven large enough to deliver the pages that will have to be written to explain this turn of events, this fucking whopper of a fabrication, to the Evenstar. 

And then she remembers the Great Council, and that he's even now loading his ship and checking his sails. And it takes everything she has to keep down the bile and not spit sick all over Samwell Tarly's pretty book. 


	7. The Evenstar in Wait

Ser Brynden has made it down to the dock to wave goodbye, and Devan's glad to see it. He failed at carving out a moment alone with the man, but he's reasonably sure he can tell his father he did his best, and he's seen Ser Brynden safe and well before he departed. 

That was his charge, after all. To get him to safety and convince him of his identity. 

Not to give the man purpose, or a sense of meaning. Devan's leaving that in the Evenstar's capable hands, and has confidence if anyone can do it he can. 

Ser Brynden looks well enough as he waves at him with his left hand from the dock, smiles a little, nods amiably at Lady Storm. 

Lord Selwyn rubs his hand across Lady Storm's shoulders, smiles down at her with affection and pride, hands her a bundle of parchments tied with strings. “One for your husband, one for Ser Davos...and one for my daughter.”

“I'll embrace her for you, my Lord.”

He laughs merrily. “If she'll let you.”

“I'll make her,” she cries, “It's a cousin's prerogative!”

“Then good fortune, Helaena; you'll need it.”

He claps once on her shoulder blade and then turns to Devan, holding his hand out like lords do to greet each other. Devan holds his own out, and then his whole hand is buried in the man's great palm and he feels nothing but warmth and good will in the clasp. “And to you as well, young Seaworth. My thanks for your company, and my wishes for your future happiness.”

“Thank you, Lord Selwyn,” Devan says, drawing up to his full height, still dwarfed by the silver-haired giant but feeling every inch a man full grown. “For your kindness, and your hospitality -”

“Nonsense, my boy. You'll always have a home here on Tarth; remember it.”

He says it gravely, and Devan turns away because he begins to tear up. “Goodbye, my Lord.”

“Fare winds, Seaworth. Lady Storm.”

And then Lord Selwyn is gone down the gangplank, to join Ser Brynden on the quay, and they're pulling up the ramp and the oarsmen grunt below them as they heave their planks into place. To their left, a cargo ship is pulling into the quay next to them, a man climbing down a ladder and leaping onto the docks. Devan sees the boy in the nest signal to the Just Maid, begging it to wait. The sailor hands a bundle of parchments to Lord Selwyn, shrugs, and then jumps into the bay and climbs back up the ladder. It's a queer sequence of events, but despite the bundle in his hands Lord Selwyn lifts his hand in farewell, and Devan feels the shift as the oars begin to move in unison. He stands beside Lady Storm as the cargo ship follows them out and the dock begins to recede in the distance. He sees the small shadows of Ser Brynden and Lord Selwyn as they make their way back to the carriage that will carry them back up the hill to Evenfall. 

He's sad to be leaving Tarth, even though he'll be glad to see his father again. 

Lady Storm watches too, next to him at the rail. He finally thinks to ask about what he heard when Evenfall is just about receding into the horizon. “You're his niece, my lady?”

She hums, raises one of her eyebrows, sums Devan up carefully before answering. “I was naught but the bastard Helaena Storm before I was Lady Storm, Devan. But my father was Endrew Tarth.”

“Was?”

She turns, leans against the railing, looks out to the West as if she can see straight through the hook and the Kingswood and into the heart of the city. “Aye. A man of the night's watch, like your King Jon, under Lord Commander Mormont. He died beyond the wall.”

The world is suddenly a lot smaller than Devan ever considered. 

That might not be to Ser Brynden's benefit; it's just as well he's staying on Tarth, relatively hidden. 

But it just might be to King Jon's, who seems to have friends in places Devan's pretty sure no one ever thought to look. 

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

“What news,” Brienne asks, not even bothering to look up from her lists of needed supplies and musters of men. There are thirty-seven dedicated to the Tower of the Hand (what's left of it) on the shift after lunch. She needs three more, else Podrick or – Seven forbid – Bronn might have to pitch in. And if it's the latter she'll catch hell at dinner. 

“Tyrion said to give his _good sister_ his warm felicitations.”

“Oh, piss off Arya,” she says, tossing the paper in front of her across the desk but smothering a smile despite herself. “Do you have anything sensible to say?”

“He _bathed_ , Brienne. Sometime since breakfast yesterday, he actually found some soap and water and cleaned himself up. I wish there was something I could tell Jon that would cheer him so completely.”

“You could tell him we received a raven from Tormund?”

They had, just yesterday. Winterfell was apparently still standing, mostly, despite mostly being inhabited by a band of wildlings. Ghost –  _the fucking wolf!_ – was a good boy. 

_Seven bless Tormund. He might be weird, but he's a decent man._

“I _did_ tell him about Tormund. He asked who was the Stark in Winterfell if we were all here, so I told him about Old Nan returning. and I said Tormund and Ghost were manning the walls, and not even so much as a smirk. He's depressed. Nothing I say helps.”

“He loved her,” Brienne says, thinking that explains everything. Of course he's depressed; he stuck a knife in her. To save them all, but still. It was still his knife, and it killed her.

“Did he, though? I mean really. He loved the idea of her, the last Dragon, the breaker of chains...but that turned out to be him, didn't it, all along? The Princess that was promised, Azor Ahai...if you ask the Dothraki, they'll tell you it's me. But it's all bullshit and smoke and mirrors and there's no such fucking thing.”

“You did ride their horse.” Brienne can't help but needle her. It's one of her few true pleasures in life. 

“And I jumped out of a tree onto the Night King, but he wanted a knife made of fire in the gut. Like Bran wouldn't know if I was about to shank him? I'm no more Azor Ahai than you're the maiden made of light.”

Brienne allows herself a small smile, just a quick tilt of the lips. “I'm no maiden.”

“So I've heard,” Arya says, kicking her feet up on the table and returning the grin. “Any word from your father?”

“He's not coming.” She hopes she sounds dismayed. “He's sending his proxy, and having me vote in his stead.”

“I bet that's a relief,” Arya replies, chewing on a marzipan cake she's drawn from beneath her cloak. 

“I'll never admit that.” Brienne narrows her eyes. She won't. But she is so...so...so...relieved. 

She's relieved about a lot of things. Lords Brandon and Reed and Lady Meera have gone to Harrenhal, and although their trip seems shrouded in mystery, she believes anyone sane would rather go sightseeing instead of picking through the rubble of the city. It is easier with them gone, a feeling she doesn't dare examine. 

Arya's snort echoes through the tent. “You don't have to, not to me. But just between us, Lady Lannister, I know it's welcome news.”

“Are you trying to provoke a fight? Call me that again, Arya, and find out which end is pointy.” She's only half serious; she wouldn't gut Arya, probably couldn't manage to, but she won't be called Lady Lannister and let it stand. Going along with a posthumous marriage of convenience to help his brother is one thing, but she'll never grasp for a title not given willingly. His name remains his own. 

Arya pulls Needle half out of its sheath and runs a finger idly along a sharp edge. “Gods, I thought you'd never ask. Shall we spar in the tent, or do you want to go out to the yard?”

She can't stand comfortably in the tent, so she agrees to the yard and follows her out. 

And when Arya bows deeply, a wolfish smirk on her lips, she can't help the smile that breaks over her face. Jaime was the last person she sparred with, but that was an intimate dance with swords. She hasn't dueled Arya since before the long night of death, when she and Podrick had ridden hard to Winterfell to deliver the news that the dragon queen insisted on riding in as a conquering hero, with a procession on horse back and dragons in the sky. Sansa had been collected in front of her lords but irate in private, and Arya and Brienne took her out to the armory and sparred until the wee hours of the morning to distract her. 

This, though...this is just for the two of them. Arya will never swing first; she kills on the offense, but she only plays defensively. It's glorious; she loves striking Arya, who uses the momentum of her blows to duck and jump and roll. Brienne's strength isn't to her advantage with the youngest Stark, who is quick and agile and always mentally two steps ahead, and it's the hardest sparring she does. For the most part it's a melody of clangs, their blades meeting as Brienne crouches and Arya spins. She's learned she can't stand still with Arya, can't throw her weight into blows. She's learned to move with, not against, a parry. 

She's a better fighter because of Arya, but they've always come a draw. Brienne knows it's primarily because Arya lets it be that way, could take her if this was anything other than ritual combat. A few times, Brienne could have forced a yield, but those are rare. 

They're not out for blood, just sport. Brienne controls the force of her swings, and Arya duels only with her twisting form and her needle; she never once even brushes the hilt of her catspaw dagger as she bounces between Oathkeeper and the dust. Both are focused, only barely aware that a crowd has gathered around them.

One of the leather straps wrapping Oathkeeper's hilt snaps, and Brienne slows, just for a moment, to readjust her grip. 

Arya gets beneath her blade, and she feels the sharp edge of needle slide beneath the plates of her fauld. Arya realizes and draws her sword back, which catches the skin at Brienne's hip. The cut isn't deep enough to register, and Brienne is already halfway into a strike. 

Arya would have got out of the way, but Sansa's alarmed voice crying out her sister's name freezes her, and Brienne has too much momentum going to stop her fist, hilt and forearm from slamming into Arya's exposed chest. Her weight carries them down, and she reaches out to toss Oathkeeper aside so she doesn't cut them with it. The strap has tangled around her fingers, though, and she ends up with her right arm extended over Arya's chest, both of them on their backs, needle in the dirt at their feet. 

Arya gasps, and before she slides out from beneath Brienne's arm chokes out, “Yield. I yield.”

There's a chorus of groans and cheers, about equal in number, that suggest gold had been wagered on the outcome. 

Arya's the one everyone should be worried about – she'd had the wind knocked out of her even before they fell – but instead it's Brienne that Sansa runs to, kneeling down to help her up.    
  
“Are you injured?”   
  
“Of course not.” Brienne doesn't ignore her outstretched hand, but only because she doesn't want to defy Sansa in front of anyone, oath of service or not. “She barely touched me.”

“Brienne, you're bleeding.” The Lady of Winterfell's concern is all out of proportion. 

She looks down. There's a trickle of blood on her tasset. She dips her hand beneath her armor and comes up with a smear on her glove, shakes her head. “Hardly. It's a scratch.”

“She's alright,” Arya interjects, popping her shoulder and shaking off the dust that covers her clothes. Her forehead is dotted with sweat, and that has turned to mud. 

“But - “

“She's alright.” The second time, it sounds final. Arya isn't going to argue about it. “Well fought. I'm famished, let's find Hot Pie.”

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

Jaime spends his day organizing training schedules. There are a handful of knights, sworn swords, on the island. They train and command militias led by the farmers and shipbuilders and shepherds of Tarth. The militias are required for any man above the age of fifteen and less than his dotage, a day per week. Those without families work one additional day a week as a guard. 

The navy has its own schedules, allows women, runs formations with the fishermen in the coastal villages. It's not in his wheelhouse; he saves it for later. 

The knights travel around the island in a seven-day circuit. Each of units is named for a god. Evenfall's is, predictably enough, the Warrior. Rosemary Hill, at the northern tip of the island, is the Maiden. He imagines it a verdant green paradise, a tropical oasis. 

It's mindless work, haphazardly assigning ink men to paper formations. He doesn't know them, has never seen them fight or drafted a strategy with them, and without that he's nothing more than a sloppy clerk, doing the job far more slowly and poorly than even a youth in his first year of scribing could. For a moment, he devises a plan to ride out for the next circuit, visit each of the units, get to know the commanders. 

But he's in no shape to ride. The wounds in his side are more painful now that they're healing; his nose and eyes have faded from rims of black to wide yellow and purple bruises, a fright to behold. He caught his image in a looking glass in his chamber closet and startled; he can only imagine what the staff thinks, marvels that Selwyn can bear to look on him. 

This is a task given out of pity, not employment. It's Ser Rolland's minutia but it isn't his vocation. Tarth has a Master at Arms, and the man is apparently a very, very good one. But he's only temporarily absent, and the lists are only a temporary way to extend Ser Brynden's stay here. 

It's nonsensical, his survival, Lord Selwyn's patience, the idea that he can do any good with a pen and not an ounce of knowledge. A pantomime life. He pretends to be Brynden. Selwyn pretends that this is a job. For two practical, grounded men, it's a farce. 

Jaime isn't particularly fond of farce.

He leaves the lists and walks – only barely limping, and with only small grimaces – to the solar. He'd been given a half-hour's worth of explanation in his room after they'd returned from the quay, been shown the previous lists and shouldered with a week's worth of correspondence from the units. And then Lord Selwyn said he was retreating to the solar to read his own letters.

No one's seen him since. Jaime asked various staff members when he went down the hall for lunch. They said he'd gone out. He took a break to ask for a cup of warm tea and asked after him again, but to no avail. No one knew where he was, or no one was willing to tell. 

Now it's late afternoon and he's almost completed a week's worth of work because paperwork is possibly only ten percent of Ser Rolland's actual job and even writing sloppily at the pace of a snail can't extend a morning's tasks beyond a day. 

The Evenstar still isn't in his solar. Jaime accepts a cup of tea from the steward and takes a seat at the east window. It's similar to the view from down the hall, out the windows of Brienne's childhood bedroom, and he has the leisure to stare out this one as long as he likes. 

How could two weeks with someone feel like the culmination of a lifetime's worth of hope? He spent five weeks at Winterfell, four in her room, and two – before Bronn arrived – in a state of belief that perhaps there might be a future for them after all. Two weeks of utter delusion that Brienne wouldn't be on Cersei's short list, or that he might fall shy of the dragon's fire, until the consequences of his bad decisions caught up with him. He would die or she would die or they would both die. And he couldn't abide the latter two options. 

But that night in the Godswood, Jaime had been a true believer. He saw her humor with Tyrion, her steady guidance with Sansa, her gentleness – more apparent because she concealed it so poorly by being so taciturn – with Podrick. He'd long loved her for who he felt like he was when he was with her, as if buried somewhere deep within him was still the small untarnished boy who dreamed of being a golden knight. But Winterfell taught him how many others felt the same way about her. She was everything he'd imagined her to be, all of the years between then and now, and she would be his salvation. 

She'd described just this scene, the view from the window as she sat at it, reading a book and dreaming that someday a knight would come riding over the crest of the hill and bid her on her life's great adventure, and fall as madly in love with her as she would with him. Florian and Jonquil only lived happily ever after in some of the stories, but she liked those ones the best. Later, when she realized she'd never be the sort of girl anyone would crown with roses, when she kept growing and growing, she vowed instead to the be the knight, to be her own rescuer, to be as skilled as her father. 

This was the Brienne that she kept to herself, dreamy and wistful and vulnerable, telling him stories about Tarth. Asking again why he'd jumped down into the pit with her as he hummed against her skin that it was because in all the best stories the knight rescued the maiden, and even though she was a knight herself sometimes even they needed rescuing. 

Gods, he's made a mess of this. He doesn't know where to start in picking up the pieces. It's better for her if he'd just go, leave for Pentos, disappear...but he can't bring himself to even consider it. 

He needs something more engaging than lists or he's going to go mad. 

The armory is directly below him, and it's empty today save a few guards and some errant squires on their missions. It won't be empty Saturday, when the whole militia meets. He shifts, preparing to muster the energy to go down the stairs and out into the yard. He should get a sense of the layout, he thinks, if he's to organize the rolls. 

Anything but standing at a window being maudlin. 

The stairs are a long way down, even though the hall is only on the third floor of the keep. His side hurts constantly, a throbbing that the maester keeps telling him is a wonderful development. His arm is a dull ache and phantoms upon phantoms where he should have flesh. Perhaps he will live to be a hundred, so old he can't walk, and by then there will just be a nub at his shoulder. Every few years he will lose another bit of arm in another horrific way.

He deserves the pain, probably. The humiliation. It's all part of his penance. 

He makes it across the yard to the open doors of the armory. He's dressed in the Stark cloak Devan left him with and a tunic and trousers that were probably Selwyn's, so he's mildly surprised to find that the guards seem to recognize him, and that they nod as he passes. 

But then again he's limping and his stubby arm is in a sling, so he probably doesn't look like much of a threat. And it's not terribly hard to imagine news of a one handed deserter traveled fast. The armory is clean and well organized, the walls decorated with faded shields of long-dead ancestors. The opposing door is propped open and seems to lead out to a courtyard. He crosses through the armory and looks out. 

A stablehand is pushing a muck cart and there's a flash of blue beyond a row of neat paddocks. 

He's thoroughly winded by the time he limps up the small rise. Lord Selwyn is at the center of a roundpen, working a dappled destrier with a series of whistles. Jaime props himself at the fence next to the three shaggy dogs who are sitting at it, watching the horse lunge with transcendent abandon. Selwyn spots him and whistles again. The horse comes to a stop in front of him, follows him as he walks over. 

He looks like a man who is troubled but trying to find peace; his face is tired, but pink from the sun and the exertion. His bright blue cloak is dusty. 

“Ser Brynden,” he greets with an enthusiasm which doesn't feel authentic, “I'm sorry to have neglected you. Have you tired of your tasks?”

“I've finished them, my lord. I need more to do.” He leans harder against the fence as he speaks and grimaces. It was too taxing to come down here. His body betrays him; he might wish for more to distract him, but he isn't up to it. 

“Here, sit,” Lord Selwyn admonishes, ducking through the fence and guiding him to a bench, and then continues with something like good humor, “My maester assures me you're a terrible patient.”

“I've always been.”

Lord Selwyn sits next to him, absently scratches one of the hound's ears, studies his dogs. “We'll take a carriage to the cove tomorrow so you can get an idea of our defenses. Perhaps you'll have ideas on improvement after you see them.”

Selwyn seems like such a good man, trusting and kind, and Jaime feels a pang of guilt for lying to him. “Surely you don't trust me so far on Ser Davos' word alone.”

“Mmmmm,” he hums, ignoring the question. “There was much news from the city in my packet this morning. I have given my permission for Ser Rolland to be suggested as head of the city guard – at least temporarily – when the council meets. In the meantime, Tarth has need of a master at arms that understands the realm, not just our corner of it.”

“I see.” He wants to ask after Brienne, and Tyrion and Podrick. Instead he remembers he is Ser Brynden now. He has trouble forming the words. “And King Jon?”

“Ser Davos seems to have a plan to free him. If they succeed in saving him, he'll be sent to the wall to guard the northern reaches of the realm. He's the son of Rhaegar Targaryen, and by law he had more claim to the throne than his aunt.” 

And Brienne? What part does she play in those plans? And Tyrion?

“And what of Lord Tyrion?” He knows he shouldn't ask, but he can't help himself. If anything, Lord Selwyn's expression softens. 

“Lady Stark insists their marriage was never annulled and will fight for her husband's release,” the older man explains, and Jaime's breath catches in his throat. Sansa? Sansa is standing by Tyrion? He can't imagine news more welcome or more shocking, and a jolt of hope courses through him. “She has released my daughter from her service to stand with her as his remaining family.”

“Pardon?” It's a reflex; Jaime has no idea what Selwyn means and doesn't much care. If Tyrion has any chance, it's better with Sansa standing as his wife. The thought that his brother might survive drowns out even a mention of Brienne. His head is swimming. 

“That was news indeed. It seems my daughter has wed.”

“No,” he says instinctively. “Sorry, what?”

He doesn't care if he looks shocked. He doesn't care if every single lie shows bald on his face, he can't have heard what he thinks he did. She can't have married someone, even if he did leave her in disgrace. Surely she wouldn't have. 

“She married Ser Jaime Lannister. In Winterfell. With nary a word to me.”

Lord Selwyn is looking at him now, the dogs forgotten, watching the emotions that unwittingly play over his face. It's news to him too, but it's not unwelcome news. He'd have married her in a heartbeat if there'd been a Sept in Winterfell. There wasn't, and he didn't, but...he closes his eyes in gratitude, can't help but sigh. 

“So it seems Ser Rolland perceived a widow's grief in her rightly. She is devastated – indeed, she admitted that – but working toward her good brother's release.”

He flushes, tries to think of something to say. “My Lord - "

“Selwyn, don't you think? Just Selwyn.” He pauses, looks over at the horse who is watching them intently from the fence. “She doesn't know you survived.”

Jaime doesn't try to deny it. He knows when he's lost. He only wonders why Selwyn isn't angry, wonders how long he's known. 

He shakes his head, holds his remaining hand palm up. “Seaworth?”

“Ah, no. You washed up with my grandfather's sword. Last I heard, young Payne was wielding it.”

Only a fool wouldn't have wondered where she'd gotten the sword before Oathkeeper, plain and unmarked as it seemed. Only a fool would have taken that one. 

He is a fool, but in a thousand ways beside this one as well.

Lord Selwyn produces a packet from under his cloak, but he's still watching the horse. “I know my daughter, I think. What she tells me, what she doesn't. And I can plainly read that there is one question she doesn't have an answer for. Did he leave because he loved her, or because he didn't?”

“I love her,” he interjects, before Selwyn can even finish. 

Selwyn doesn't nod, doesn't acknowledge he's heard him. He just waits. Jaime waits too. He has nothing more to add that, no defenses or caveats. He loves her in the present tense, and he's at her father's mercy. 

“Then the gods have brought you here. And now we wait to see what they will do there.”

“Will you tell her?”

“That I've taken another bastard knight as Master at Arms by way of Ser Davos? Ser Rolland will tell her that much.”

So that was a no. He wishes he could tell her...I'm alive. I'm here. I love you. He wishes  _someone_ would tell her that.

“You would keep such a thing from your daughter?”

“I would serve Tarth, as I've always done. I would do my duty to protect it from the realm. I do not know what they have planned, only that they are scheming for peace...and that Lord Tyrion being heir to the Rock is part of that. So we wait.”

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

Brienne's tent is inside another tent, and she's crying because of it. 

Not that anyone but him could recognize it as crying, but he sees the blinking and the tremble in her chin and knows he'd better do something. 

So he takes her arm and guides her outside, down the little hill, over the rocks as Meera showed him. It's quiet, sheltered. Here they can talk and no one can hear them. And they haven't talked, not really, in three days. They're always surrounded in the encampment, and Brienne has been inventing ways to keep busy to avoid conversations. Podrick has been so intent on readying the city for her – for all them – that he hasn't had leisure to worry about how she's doing. 

He can't make out everything in the darkness, but she seems more composed as she sits, staring down over the hill at the small fires that warm the refugees in their own camps, the dotted points beyond that suggest some are even returning to the city. 

“They thought you would want a bit of privacy,” he explains, ready to translate things into a language she will understand. 

“I don't want to talk about it, Podrick,” she answers primly. “I'm fine. It was very thoughtful.”

Ah, so that's it. She's overwhelmed when people see her enough to extend kindness. Not proper manners, she's very easy with those, but real kindness, that meets her where she is...that scares her. Her cousin's arrival means that Tarth has a state tent, but they set Brienne's travel kit up inside it, with an opening toward the back, so that she could still have her own space. It was Gilly's idea, and it  _was_ very thoughtful. 

“Your cousin is very nice,” he tries, after a minute of silence. He think she might be rolling her eyes. She doesn't seemed chuffed to have a closely related female companion even though Ser Rolland's wife seems like a kind, good-humored woman. “She and Gilly get on well.”

“Her father was a man of the watch,” she says blandly. “My uncle Endrew. She's desperate for some idea of what his life was like there. It doesn't surprise me she's gravitated to Maester Samwell.”

“It must be nice to have a family,” he muses aloud. 

“For fuck's sake, Podrick, it's your family, too,” she cries, and then falls strangely, eerily silent. No sighing, no sniffing, not a movement from her. She is like a dark shadow of a statue. 

He shifts closer to her and he hears, above the white noise of the camps and the city below them, a crow calling in the distance. It sends a warm tremble down his spine, seems to affirm him in a way he can't begin to describe. 

“Ser – my lady,” he stutters, as he always does when he can't figure out how to say something. He struggles to tell her that's she's his best friend and big sister and sometimes almost a mother, without actually saying any of those words. “You are my family, it's true. But sometimes I wonder what will happen when all of this is over.”

She doesn't reply, but then the moon shifts and he can see the tears coursing down her cheeks. She isn't sobbing, her body isn't racking, there's no movement at all except a steady drip from her chin to her chest. 

He's not sure how long the silence lasts, but his hand finds hers, cold and ungloved in the darkness. He tucks it beneath her cloak, and then reaches for her left one and holds it. 

“You have lands on Tarth, Ser Podrick. I -,” her voice is tinny and breathless, but she takes a deep shuddering breath, “did not expect to survive. In the event you did, there were...arrangements.”

He's rendered speechless, not only because of the lengths she'd gone to in his care, but because of what it must cost her to tell him this, to admit it. 

“Helaena was to be his heir, of course; it is only my mother's dower lands and they were modest, but they are already yours. I will not rescind it.”

That explains why she is so uneasy with her cousin, perhaps, but asks a hundred other questions. 

“My lady, you are hardly dead.”

He can still detect tears, though the drip has closed, but now she barks out an empty laugh that is the most bitter sound he's heard from her yet. “It's worse; I'm the Evenstar in wait.”

“I don't understand. You've commanded an army; what is so terrible about being a great lord?”

“Because the sword in my hands doesn't negate what's between my legs. I'm not a lord. I'll be a broodmare for a petty island full of ships and sheep, married to some grasping fool.”

He can't help it, he laughs. The idea is so ludicrous. But then she keeps to Arya and Sansa by day and Snow's tent in the evening. She doesn't go down to the city. She doesn't hear the stories and songs – Brienne the beauty, the Kingslayer leapt in a bear pit for her, single handedly rescued Lord Tyrion's lady wife from the Boltons, protected the walls of Winterfell from death itself – and these are only the ones he knows to be  _true_ – doesn't realize that she'll never be that Brienne again. 

And in truth, she never was. Her first betrothal had ended in death, not rejection. Her second had been a sort of heartbreak, but dealt by a most unworthy boy. And her third had been exactly the farce her sword had revealed it to be. 

Her great tragedy was that her childhood crush rewarded her with a place in his vanguard rather than his already spoken-for heart.

After that, it was just one great man after another going to desperately stupid lengths for mere scraps of her affection. She was the one who didn't see the truth; the rest of them could see just fine. Everyone said any man who met Sansa Stark would die for her, and they meant it. But you didn't see any one handed knights or blubbering wildlings trailing behind her, claiming to be mad for her soul.

“They say you only married him because he fought the King Beyond the Wall for your hand and won it, you know.”

“I'm very sure they do,” she bites back, and he realizes she's misunderstood. 

So he says again, more slowly, with more emphasis, “They say the golden Lannister, under some interpretations the heir to the throne, dueled the King Beyond the Wall. For  _your_ hand.”

“What king?” She's confused, but she's stopped crying completely and is gripping his hand back now. 

“Tormund.”

“Tormund is...” she pauses. She was going to say 'not a king', he suspects, but that's not strictly true and she knows it. King by whose standards? He thinks of all the other things that are probably going through her head, ways to describe Tormund – ridiculous, a bit scary, weird – but then she just asks, “Who says this, Podrick?”

And he remembers where her head had been when it all went down. She was sloshed, for one. And she had indeed been stolen by Jaime Lannister, who had kidnapped her in her own chambers and married her by wildling rite. At least that was Tormund's (ridiculous, scary, weird) interpretation, and he'd been the most vocal in recounting events to all and sundry.

“Everyone. You'd already left. It wasn't a fight, just a few words. Tormund challenged him and he went after you and Lord Tyrion said something cutting. But you know how rumors are, it all gets magnified. Tormund spent a long time crying to any willing ear; I heard he even tried Clegane for sympathy at one point.”

“Seven hells. And you just sat there and let this all happen?”

Well that was a bit unfair. He'd been occupied too. He'd followed a couple of serving girls down to the kitchens and eaten pies and drank ale and done damage control for his lords and ladies, as he always did.   
  
“I'd already left for the worst of it.” That was, strictly speaking, true. But he and Tyrion had enjoyed themselves, perhaps a touch too much. And he may have inadvertently played into some rumors of his own that night, particularly about Brienne saving Sansa Stark with her lion-shaped half of Eddard Stark's valyrian sword. He suspects she wouldn't much like how that's been embellished either, but it was necessary and he's not sorry. “The point is, you're not going to be forced to marry a fool if the worst anyone says about you is that kings and lords will risk their lives to win your favors. And that is the  _very_ worst anyone is saying.”

She snorts. She doesn't really believe him, but her tears have turned to a sort of wry amusement. “You're deluded. Careful lest you start to believe in your own bullshit.”

He considers this. It's a danger and he knows it; even Tyrion once warned him of the dangers of believing any rumors about oneself, no matter how flattering or demeaning. But Ser Rolland has come to him seeking the truth behind rumors, and Ser Davos, and even – at one point – Lord Reed. And he's given them all the most honest recounting he can. He probably owes it to her now, despite how it will sting. 

“But most just believe that you were very much in love, and I doubt anyone is expecting you to take another husband right away, whatever your duties may be.”

“Ah,” she sighs, and it's more exhalation than exclamation. But she doesn't argue with him, or snap, or draw her hand away from his. It's a sort of truce, the truth. She sounds wistful as she looks out over the city. “Would that all we had was time."

He can't figure out how to respond to that, so he doesn't. He holds her hand and they sit beneath the endless sky, the red starless dome of the city's glow. He wonders what it will be like when this is all over, to go to Tarth with her. He will; she's made it possible, even necessary. He's glad of it, that he can keep going with her, watching over her, in the coming years. Because they do have time – decades of it in front of them – in the broken kingdoms with their ash throne. 

He's a knight, a landed knight. And she's a general and a lord, for all that she's a lady too. 

They met death and yet they are not dead. The first night out in the wilds of the north he'd huddled beside Theon Greyjoy at a fire while Brienne stalked the forest and Lady Sansa slept soundly for the first time in years. “We met death. Yet what is dead may never die, no matter how much it wants to.”

Theon Greyjoy is dead...but only sort of because indeed what is dead may never die. Love doesn't die; his death didn't take him away, it gave him back to them. Whole and complete. The broken man who lingered in the twilight, struggling against the darkness despite having it all over him...he went out to the Stranger covered in love, washed over in the maiden's grace. 

Theon, in death, didn't just look happy; he looked blissful. 

Deep in his bones, he has a feeling they are all going to be alright. Even Brienne. Or maybe especially her. 


	8. The Last Knight of Summer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, ya'll...this is where it gets weird. Strap on your tinfoil hats and let Ser Maynard take over from here out ;-)
> 
> While this got a...ahem...wee bit heavy on book symbolism in this chapter, it's also where the tale diverged from the books in *every* meaningful way. Because in no sense did I EVER set out to write Meera/Podrick background romance. But the more I had to stick them in the same room, the more they started rubbing off on each other. 
> 
> It's a crack pairing in the bookverse. Hell, it's a crack pairing in *this* one, but...I think less of one.

In the forest beside the water, Meera dreams. Wherever her father and Bran are, the small form in a bundle of furs beside the dying fire is safe enough for deep slumber and visions.

She dreams it's decades ago; she is there beside the dark laughing girl with bright violet eyes, spinning in the arms of a young man four inches shorter, dressed in green wool and tooled leather. Benjen – the boy, not the stranger in the snow with his horse – blows them all a merry kiss from across a tent as a young silver prince plays his harp and watches a girl who resembles the soul of Brienne in the body of Arya with Sansa's pretty face.

Lyanna, she knows. And Eddard and Rhaegar and the Sword of the Morning in his blinding white cloak.

Ghosts, they were; and ghosts they were not, not all of them, for the violet-eyed lady in silk was her pretty, plump mother – the girl who hadn't yet lost her best friend, her brother, and in time her son as well. A girl who hadn't yet met grief in the guise of the Stranger.

Of all the dancing young faces in the tent that night, only she and Jon Snow are left of their heirs.

Jon plunges a knife into his queen. Jon laughs as a flame-haired wildling ducks out of his embrace. What love is not, and what it is. It is not power; it is only surrender.

She sees it, then, the battle, in bits and pieces. Theon and Bran; moreover, why it had to be Theon when she'd wanted so desperately for it to be her in the Godswood beside her best friend. Sansa and a dwarf who must be Tyrion, who is kissing her hand in a crypt. Podrick and a man who must be Jaime Lannister following a screaming, battle-crazed Brienne up a rampart, swords in their hands. Ser Davos choosing mercy over vengeance, there at the end of the world. Arya, meeting the stranger as himself, gifting the many-faced god with mercy.

Are they true?

They are dreams.

At the end, she is there with Bran in the Godswood, at his left hand. Theon Greyjoy brandishes his lance on the right side. A tiny girl with a long sword. A sharp-angled crow in a black cloak, and on closer examination she's seen him before, at the gate, when he was shelter and safety. A grizzled and scarred knight with a beatific look on his cynic's face. Benjen and Hodor and Summer and her brother.

She raises her bow. Beside her, Podrick and Brienne and her dream Lannisters and Sansa and Ser Davos and a host of people she doesn't recognize ready their blades to fight death, and she knows that they will not defeat it.

But they will die fighting for life. All of them; even the ones that still live. She is glad to be fighting between Bran and Podrick, for their vision of a better world. Perhaps that's all love is, in the end. Nocking your arrow and holding your breath against death.

Beside the black pool of Winterfell, a towering knight stoops to kiss a dark laughing girl with a sword in her right hand and her left on her swollen belly.

“If it's a girl, I'll give her a good common name. Jeyne, perhaps; plain Jeyne Snow. But if it's a boy; a boy I shall call Duncan, after the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard.”

“Lord Rivers - “

“Can freeze his balls off in the great white north for all I care. You and your vows; what do the old Gods care for the seven and their silly rules? They'll sing tales of the white cloaked wolves in their pretty southern septs, won't they, when the whole song is sung? When we all dance with our ghosts?”

“Come south with me,” he breathes against her lips, “let love be the death of duty.”

“Oh Dunk, how would I ever love you if you weren't your duty? It should be the death of my admiration. I'll grow old here, with our children's children's children, spinning all the webs I wove for you. Go; serve life, as long as you live, and love – wherever you find it. You will ever be summer to me, my sweet warrior, and if it be a girl I'll send her south. Our wild Jeyne will be a bride fit a king.”

A dragonfly, shimmering blue and translucent wings, lands on the Weirwood face.

High in the halls of the kings who are gone, Jenny dances with her ghosts.

Deep in the woods by the Isle of Faces, Meera dreams.

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

The water is deep and warm and glorious. She sits in the corner of the pool, and by now she has even forgotten to wonder if they're looking at her ungodly tall frame, her tiny breasts, or the thick muscles in her calves. Gilly waddled in with her swollen belly, purple marks circling the entire globe, and Sansa slid down with the scars she has forgotten to hide crossing her back. Arya has, on closer examination, been stabbed more than once and sports calves so thickly muscled they make Brienne's look delicate by comparison. Helaena splashed in with all the grace of a moor-bred shepherdess. They are beautiful women, all of them, but even they aren't perfect.

Meera still hasn't returned. Yara refused their offer of a warm bath.

For now, on the eve of the great council, these are the women of King's Landing, the women of the court, in the baths beneath the keep. It's come down to them.

In another time, in this very place, she'd felt like a freak. She'd been the one out of place, the one who would never be willingly, graciously accepted at the court of Queen Cersei.

But by that measure, they're all freaks. Even Sansa. Especially Sansa; Cersei and her ilk had been especially cruel to the innocent girl in their keeping.

Here, in these baths, Brienne can finally admit that Podrick's words were true. Brienne _has_ kept her word.

Kingsguard to Renly Baratheon, a joke from the outset. Renly had no claim except that people loved him – the Tyrells, the Tarlys, Brienne herself. And here sit Brienne and Randall Tarly's heir – by way of Gilly's belly – in Kings' Landing on the eve of the great council.

 _We were Renly's_ , she thinks. Sworn for no other reason than love for a man, an exceptional man. Renly, the best of the Baratheons. The best of the usurpers.

Helaena is Brienne's cousin...but married, ultimately, to the Caron son that followed Stannis to the Blackwater. Old ties that predate any five pretender kings bind them all, but he was Stannis' man.

Stannis, who died at her blade.

“Go on, then. Do your duty,” he'd choked.

So she did.

Jaime had grown hard when she'd recounted that story. They'd both tried to pretend they hadn't noticed.

Like other times, in other baths, when she'd tried not to notice. He'd been thinking of Cersei, she'd told herself so many years ago. But there was no denying that he hadn't been thinking of Cersei while he was snuggled in her furs and she was banking the fire and telling him about Stannis and his end.

She never got to the part where it hadn't felt like vengeance or victory or justice, but the sort of gift a bannerman gives a lord he loves. He'd been glad to see her; glad to die on some other hill than the one claimed by the Boltons. How could she tell Jaime that when he'd ordered her to do her duty, he'd been begging for her blade? To die because he'd got too close to the flames and lost sight of his own duty, flayed by scum in the dregs of the north...would have been a tragedy for him. Brienne, at least, offered justice for his second most shameful act. His first kinslaying.

Jaime got off on the thought of her killing Stannis. If they had a shameful kink in their mostly earnest and loving sex life, it was that.

Helaena laughs loudly at something Arya said, and it pulls Brienne back to the present.

Arya has killed everyone who matters and ridden a horse out of hell. There is nothing Arya wants less than to be queen. Even she who by right of conquest could claim it.

Sansa is a born leader, the glue that holds them all together. She is the maiden incarnate despite her scars, scrubbing her skin and watching her sister splash and play with a wistful smile. They would all die for Sansa without a second thought.

_Your daughters are alive, Catelyn. As safe as anyone ever could be. As safe as anyone ever is._

It feels like prayer. Brienne isn't sure who she's praying to. Maybe the ghosts of the people she loved, the ones who aren't here. Renly. Catelyn.

Jaime. Except Jaime feels less like a ghost than a haunting, less absent than always, unceasingly present.

She hadn't believed him her first time in the city, the golden knight on the balcony. How could Sansa be better off with Tyrion?

But she is. Better off. More loved. Safer.

Sansa was sold to them, but she lies by omission that her legal marriage was a consummated one. Brienne went freely, but she lies by omission that her consummated union was a legal marriage. They make a safer world as Lannisters. Whatever the truth, it is also that. Tomorrow, they will sit before a council and beg for Tyrion, and Jon Snow, and peace...as sisters.

Catelyn might even be proud.

Across the bath, Sansa gasps. Brienne realizes she's been staring into space, raises her eyes and sees Sansa is looking at her.

“Brienne,” she says quietly, below the din of the girls on the benches across from them, “you had the most beatific look, like the maiden reborn...” She tilts her head, smiles softly. “I think in this light you might be the loveliest person I've ever seen.”

She feels the blush steal over her, wants to protest – but she knows Sansa means every word. “I was praying to your mother, just then. That's what you saw - “

“I know what I saw.” She ducks her head into the water, comes up blinking and laughing. “Tonight we are wolves and stars, and tomorrow we will be lions. Thank you. This all – us, here – Tyrion – it goes so far beyond your vows to my mother. But we are not fools' gold, you and I, and – you are here, with me, and I'm glad of it.”

She doesn't know where to put that sort of compliment, so she deflects. “Careful, my lady. Someone will accuse you of loving your husband.”

“Not half so much as you loved yours, Ser Brienne.”

And it cuts. It cuts so near the mark. She forces herself to remember the first time she'd marked the affection between her lady and Jaime's infamous brother. She'd been three-quarters dead, bruised and bloodied and exhausted, wounded and hoarse from shouting. So tired she could barely stand, leaning against Jaime and Podrick, both of them as shaky on their feet and battered as she was. It was a miracle they were standing; it was a miracle they were alive. The dawn began to pierce the horizon, and the dead lay mercifully still and sated at their feet.

Jaime's one good hand hooked under her helmet, his fingers on her pulse at her neck. I'm here; we're here. We're alive. Her palms cradling Podrick's wet cheeks, slick with tears and blood. I'm here; we're here. We're alive.

The great doors of Winterfell creaking open had pierced through the din of the moment after battle, the roar of their heartbeats. And Sansa and Tyrion had emerged from the depths with hands clasped, determined to know the outcome and to begin to muster the survivors.

The relief had come in a shockwave. She could feel Jaime and Podrick, the two people most dear to her in the world. And she could see Sansa and Tyrion, whole and unharmed. Her duty and Jaime's heart.

After that, each discovery of survival was its own sort of miracle, but they all paled in comparison to that one.

“Love is the death of duty,” she says. It's an expression she's heard from some of the northerners, whispering about King Jon. Night's Watch culture. It's true enough.

“Sometimes. Not always... Besides, I'm not even sure what those words mean anymore. I did not marry Tyrion because I loved him. I don't tremble at the thought of being in his arms. But in the crypt – he kept his vows to protect to me. He held my hand during the worst of it, and I was glad that if I had to face death I did so at his side. That's not duty. I suppose I do love him. More than I knew.”

How well does Sansa know her? Brienne has to admit that maybe the answer is well enough. The words steel her back and give her purpose.

“I'll do my best, Lady Sansa. For Ser Jaime...and for you.”

Sansa swims over to her, takes her hand. They are naked and exposed, both of them. None of them know what tomorrow brings. But they are together, and that is enough.

It will have to be.

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

“I dreamed,” she babbles, when at last her father and Bran row across the lake to her camp. “Strange dreams.”

“Aye,” says her father.

Bran says nothing at all. But then, later, as they ride back to the city, he draws beside her. “I would go mad were I still Brandon Stark.”

He thinks he's become something different, and so he has. Trauma, her mother told her. Some people get so broken they can never heal, no matter how much they're loved to rights. But it doesn't feel like trauma, his distance. He doesn't seem broken, just absent.

She's the one who got broken.

“To dream all, to see all; it's a curse. But I see this too. I would not have survived without you, Meera. Your brother and Hodor died for me, but you saved me. Thank you.”

He is distant when he says it. It doesn't mean what she once longed for it to, but it soothes her all the same. She doesn't understand his burdens but she understands that her love for Bran Stark is acknowledged, perhaps in some small way returned even if not the way she once longed for it to be.

“Theon Greyjoy died for you,” she finally says, after they've ridden a distance, after she's had time to consider his words. “I saw it.”

“A death in exchange for a life. He once tried to kill me, but...he chose love over fear when it mattered most.”

Bran really does see all, it seems. He weighed Greyjoy and found him not wanting. He's weighed Meera and found her – perhaps – righteous. She hopes so. She's given everything and then some.

He doesn't speak to her again, not until they're back in camp. In the bustle, she sees Arya and Sansa from a distance but she can't find Podrick in the crowd. And then they're inside the Stark tent, and Bran is greeting his sisters as she and her father sit quietly off to the side.

“Arya, find Ser Brienne. I have need of her services.”

It's a strange request, Meera thinks, as strange as the look that passes between Bran and her father as he says it. They've scarcely an hour before the meet; surely Ser Davos or Lord Royce would be better choices at this late hour. Brienne is a wonderful person, but not the one you seek for last minute council. She's too taciturn to be the person you turn to when the hour of reckoning is at hand. Regardless, Arya departs.

Sansa asks about their journey. Her father and Bran say nothing; Meera describes the lake, the fish she pulled from it and fried at her fire, the quiet beauty of the shore. She doesn't emphasize that she was alone for most of their trip, and Sansa looks bored and a bit aghast that they left for an outdoor excursion at such a moment. Eventually, she is out of ways to describe trout to a Tully, and they trail off into silence.

Arya returns a few minutes later, a flushed and breathless Brienne in tow. Brienne looks flustered, but she bows low, her hand on the sword at her hip. “My Lord Brandon, you asked for me?”

“I did, Ser Brienne.” Bran cannot move about as people do when they're prevaricating, she thinks. He's forced to sit in the chair, and stare ahead, and it's more unnerving. He stares as most people pace, with the same frenetic intensity. “You served my mother.”

“I serve her still,” she interjects, clutching her hand tighter around the pommel of her lion. “I always will, my Lord.”

“You vowed to find her daughters, to bring them to Winterfell. You did, and for that I thank you,” he says. Arya nods; Sansa smiles softly and knowingly, as if this is a familiar, well-trod path. “And that is all she asked; she left you no offices on behalf of her sons.”

Brienne looks pained at this, shakes her head. “We had word you'd been killed, Lord Brandon, else she would have. She loved you; she grieved you terribly.”

“She did.” He gestures to Arya, who moves his chair closer to the entrance of the tent, where Brienne stands. He examines her closely, and she doesn't flinch. “In the north, beyond the wall, we were scarce in number. Hodor – Wylis Snow, our cousin – protected me all my young life, and died for me there. My friend Jojen – Lord Reed's only son – died for me. My direwolf, Summer – she also died for me.”

It is strange to hear her own words on his lips, echoing back to her.

“My lady Meera alone survived; she returned me safely to the realms of men.”

Oh. Those are not her words, not at all. She would never have claimed that for herself.

“My cousin was my brother's heir, by will and by want. My sister is the warden of the north, by right of conquest. I have no swords in my service, you see. I had hope that you might do me a service, in the name of my mother. In the name of the mother.”

“Anything, my Lord,” Brienne breathes, and she clearly means it. Her hand has tightened, she is beginning to draw her sword from its scabbard, and her face is suffused with determination and duty and desire.

“I want you to knight Meera.”

At this, Brienne falters, even as Meera's mind goes blank. He wants her to _what_? Greywater Watch has no knights, and even if it did...well, she's no more or less a woman than Brienne is. Perhaps this is to be the way of it, girls as knights, in the new world they are building.

Brienne is looking not at Meera, but at her sword. Dark Sister is slung, as it always is, on her hip. She never draws it, preferring her bow or fork. It is merely a souvenir of her time in the cave in the land of always winter. But now her hand moves to it, instinctively and protectively.

“Kneel, Lady Meera.” Brienne asks no more questions; she has heard the story, from Meera herself, and probably from everyone else as well.

She looks to her father, who winks. It's not a jest to him, not entirely, but he has little use for southern knights and their silly rituals and strict religion.

I do this for my uncle, she thinks, dropping to her knees in the dust of the tent. She draws her sword and kneels behind it. I do this for Ser Brynden Rivers. It might mean nothing to the men of the Neck, but it meant everything to them. She is their heir as well as Howland Reed's.

It's what Brandon can give her, and she'll take it. Brienne speaks clearly and firmly as she lowers her blade. “In the name of the warrior, I charge you to be brave.”

They've all stared death in the face. She is not braver than anyone else in this room, but she tries not to flinch when she's frightened. She nods. She will try to be brave.  
  
“In the name of the father, I charge you to be just.”

Her eyes meet her father's and this time his smile is genuine. He loves her, and she him; what she knows of justice she learned at his knee.

“In the name of the mother, I charge you to defend the innocent.”

She thinks of her own mother, of the sharp, kind middle aged matron that was once the toast of Westeros. Of the girl who gave up her home and family and followed her husband deep into the swamp in the name of innocents.

Jon Snow, Meera knows now. She did it to protect Meera herself, and Jon Snow, and the world they dreamed might someday be born out of the ashes.

It's the song of ice and fire, played on a harp by a young singer with a wide smile, long ago.

She nods.

“In the name of Lady Catelyn, in the name of the Mother, by the old Gods and the new...arise, Ser Meera of Greywater Watch, a knight of the land of always winter and all the summer kingdoms.”

She does, tucks her sword back into her scabbard. If she looks at Bran, she'll cry – so she looks at her father, who smiles slyly and she thinks a little proudly, and at Brienne, who also seems like she's trying very hard not to cry. She looks at Arya, more a warrior than Meera will ever pretend to be, and yet not a knight. But Arya is smirking as always. Sansa – more a lady than Meera will ever pretend to be – lays a hand on her arm, squeezes it gently.

“I would ask a favor of you, Ser Meera. The Unsullied have agreed to let us post our own knights in the cells during the Council. I would ask that you go with Podrick and Ser Rolland to guard my family.”

There is no time for congratulations, no time to bask in the moment or savor Bran's gift, the long-delayed proof of his appreciation. There is just the duty of a knight and the charge of protecting...well, Meera suspects neither one is innocent. Jon, the boy her mother drowned in mud to protect, really did kill his chosen liege. Tyrion really did betray her. Protect the guilty.

In the name of the father, who looks upon them and sees all. Who weighs intention alongside action, or the lack of it. And in the name of the mother, who cries mercy mercy mercy at the abyss.

And in the name of the peace they are trying to beg, borrow, or steal. It's a peace her brother and Summer and Hodor all died to trying to preserve.

She is a knight now. In the memory of her uncle, she will try to be a good one.

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

Ser Brynden Stone is the acting master at arms for Tarth, and it's quite a coming up for a wounded hedge knight who washed up pale and broken from unnamed battles in unnamed places. He served under Ser Brienne during the long night and was a sword at her back during the retreat; that is all Lord Selwyn tells the men of his history, and it suffices to gain him some small measure of their tolerance despite his dubious origins. It buys him time to prove himself at least, though he thinks he detects more pity than respect in their deference. 

Jaime Lannister hates being pitied. Bearing it is part of his penance. There is much to atone for, so he tries to accept the weight of it.

Selwyn ignores the secret between them, speaks of it no further. He shows him the defenses around Evenfall as they ride out in the carriage, introduces him to the commanders of the guards. He talks of Tarth's economy, its culture, the people they defend...but he doesn't speak of the city, the realm, or what he knows. It's a strange sort of truce to have with a man who knows enough to have him killed, who even perhaps knows enough to want him dead, and yet desires only his competence and labor in return for safety and succor.

Jaime had a lion where he should have had a father, a mad dragon where he should have had a mentor. He's never served someone patient and kind and just, unless you count Brienne, and it's a new experience.

Tomorrow, the militia will muster in Evenfall, but today the Evenstar rode out early for Morne, explaining that he needed to be there when the council met, and Jaime asked no questions, pressed him no further. Selwyn handed him a bundle of folios and asked him to sort through them.

Selwyn might as well have left him a cache of wildfire and a match.

At noon, he's dried his tears enough to emerge from his room and make his way to the solar for a light lunch. He hoped a little food would clear his head; it doesn't.

He'd started with the smallest folio first, a slim leather envelope that held two small missives, both sent by raven. They were familiar, seeing as he had written them. One was particularly memorable, as the illegible scrawl had been his first attempt at writing with his left hand, and he remembered clearly scratching out the confession of a lie about sapphires and a plea for ransom. The second had been sent from King's Landing; the ransom was accepted, and Lady Brienne was enjoying a respite and the hospitality of King Tommen's court under the Lord Commander's protection.

The second had obviously been stitched together out of a number of bald faced lies, but the sentiment behind it had been real enough. She was safe. He'd done his best. It wasn't (it was never never never) enough thanks for saving his worthless life.

So not very different from his feelings here and now, except then his life came with promises of Lannister support when it still meant something, and now all it came with was a one-handed cad with a terrible track record and a death wish that wouldn't find easy company with peace.

Not a very good a trade after all for gold and sapphires, but nothing he hadn't been prepared to face.

It was the other letters in the folio which had sent him reeling.

Podrick to Selwyn, from the Vale, assuring him he'd try to be a good squire to his lady knight. They were out looking for Sansa.

The real Brynden – the Blackfish – to Selwyn. _She has found my niece, and comes in the name of the Starks, and the Kingslayer bends his knee to serve her and she will be fine and she will be well and thank you for raising the knight who comes to defend the weak and make peace at the drawbridge, you have done well and farewell. Farewell, my friend._

Podrick, from Riverrun. _It's a desperate gamble, my Lord. But Ser Jaime gave his word, and it is worth something. If we fail, I have tried to serve her faithfully. You should be proud of her your daughter, she's the truest knight who ever lived._

Brienne, from Riverrun. _I have tried to treat with the Lannisters and the Blackfish and I have failed. Stubborn men ever make war when it's senseless; I have Ser Jaime's word that quarter will be given and hope that Podrick shall survive the siege. If I do not, care for him as you cared for me. Your loving daughter._

Podrick again. In King's Landing. _We serve the living, my Lord, and I serve your living daughter. We ride north to meet death and make peace with it._

Brienne, from Winterfell. _It is not yet lost; the Targaryen_ _arrives with her dragons_ _. The Lannisters too. Ser Jaime is here. We will fight, and if we die – care for Podrick as you would a son born from my body, for he is my son in my heart. He's our promise of a better life and a brighter future._

Brienne, elated, just after the battle. _We are safe. Podrick and Jaime and Sansa and Arya and Bran, all of Lady Catelyn's remaining children…we are alive,_ _and unharmed_ _._

Brienne to Selwyn. _King's Landing will fall. Ser Jaime and Lord Tyrion and King Jon have all left, and there will be war_ _again_ _. We ride for the city at dawn; send aid, if I've ever begged you anything_ _it's this_ _. Send aid in the name of the_ _M_ _other's mercy – we will need it._

The packet that she wrote to Selwyn from the city after the battle is not part of the papers; for now her lord father keeps those words to himself. Still, it's a revelation of her character, a confirmation of her blinding love for all of them. He hasn't failed to mark her progression from Ser Jaime to Jaime and back again, the slip in a heated moment that must've revealed far more than she ever intended to a man as shrewd as Selwyn.

Jaime doesn't deserve her, never did. That's not a theory, a dark projection from a sundered mind; it's the reality. He had her and used her poorly, betrayed her cruelly. At the time he thought it was for the realm, for the greater good, for her life and future, but in the aftermath he can see it clearly for what it was. Cowardice. That she'd follow him, that her fighting spirit and gentle heart would lead her into the abyss on his heels.

Perhaps it would have. But between throwing herself in front of him at the Dragon Queen's borrowed throne and throwing herself in front of him as the dead rushed toward them, Brienne had never quavered at the abyss.

If courage had been lacking, it was his. He'd wavered.

She has an heir; it's Podrick. She has a father who adores her, the respect of the multitudes, the love of the wolf cubs she bartered her life to save.

She has a husband, a dead one, a feast for crows above a city of ash.

She has a one armed knight in Evenfall who doesn't deserve her but loves her anyway. He isn't sure what he's waiting for, or hoping for, or expecting. His once-glib tongue is silent in the quiet halls of the maiden's castle on the hill.

He wants a better future for her. Whatever that means, his soul longs for it. He doesn't care what form it takes, whether or not it includes or excludes him. He just wants her drunk on sunlight with flowers in her hair and Oathkeeper on her hip, a smile on her winsome face.

The last knight of summer.

It's no dream. He's wide awake, imagining. Perhaps another man would call it praying, but he's not like other men.

Still, he finds himself wandering down the stairs, only laboring a little under his wounds, making his way to the Sept.

It's quiet, like everything else about Evenfall. The people are out bustling in the town, the squires and guards are milling around the armory on various tasks, but the Sept is empty save an old woman sweeping the Smith's alcove. She's dressed neatly but not fashionably, her gray hair winding around the back of her head like a crown. When she turns her head toward him, she doesn't look old at all. It's clear she was once pretty, and even now there's a certain strange beauty in her stillness and contentment as she studies him, her hands loosely holding the broom.

“Looks like you've acquired quite a pile,” he quips, nodding toward the spotless tile she was sweeping, and then kicks himself. Ser Brynden is surely not renowned for his witty tongue. And then he remembers that Bronn loaned him the identity, so unless he resolves to swear more he can't tarnish his borrowed reputation.

Her mouth quirks and she is old enough her wrinkles deepen around her smile. “It's the Smith's corner. Sometimes employment is a form of prayer and I've never been much use kneeling in front of the Crone. Or the maiden or mother for that matter. You must be the Ser Brynden Stone joined us from the North.”

He nods. He hopes she won't ask why he's there, because he doesn't have an answer. He was thinking of Brienne, and he was walking, and now he is standing in the center of Evenfall's simple sept and this woman with a broom is dissecting him with her eyes. It's disturbing. Where she was a moment ago a stooped crone, she is now the knowing mother.

But she doesn't ask why he is there. She curtsies, with a girlish little laugh. “Eyfa Mertyns, Ser. Twas my daughter brought you here."

“Lady Storm?”

The woman snorts, and now she is just charming and human and somewhere in her mid-fifties, old enough to have earned her grey hair and laughter lines but not doddering. “Storms and Stone, eh lad? Her husband is a Caron and her father was Endrew Tarth, whatever she's called, but aye. Welcome to Tarth. I'll leave you to your supplications, Ser, and wish you good health.”

“I interrupted you, I should -”

But then the merry widow is thrusting her broom into his hands, and bustling out the door with a sweep of her woolen skirts. And he finds himself sweeping the floor, tidying imaginary dust from the smooth inlaid stones of the seven-pointed star. He desperately misses having a hand, even a useless one made of gold.

He will find a smith, he thinks, and rectify that.

He will make himself useful again.

Perhaps he's a dead man. Perhaps even if he waits here his whole life, he will never have a chance to apologize to Brienne, or to thank Tyrion, or to see Podrick as the glorious knight, as Galladon come again.

But perhaps he will.

Where there's life, there's possibility. Perhaps the gods have not finished with him yet.

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

He was burning to tell her about Tarth when he saw her again, but when the Stark girls come to get Podrick and Rolland for the council, Meera slides up next to him with an expression that rivals Brienne's for the weight of it. She looks burdened and thoughtful, her brow furrowed and her hand clasped tight around the hilt of the sword he's never seen her reach for until now. “Ser Podrick. I'm to be one of the guard.”

“She's a knight now,” Arya offers cheerfully, flanked by her adoring Dothraki guards. The Unsullied eunuchs are impatient and he has no time to react before they're being led off to the Dragon Pit's dungeons.

“Bran asked Ser Brienne to knight me,” Meera says under her breath as they walk. “For protecting him beyond the wall.”

There are a million things he could say, but Ser Rolland is beside him and he doesn't know how much of the common tongue the eunuchs speak. “It's well deserved.”

“It was an honor to be knighted by her sword,” she answers quietly.

“She gifted me her mother's dower lands,” Podrick says in return, and it's not the way he imagined telling her. “Before the battle in the north. And now...”

He thinks there's a ghost of a smile on Meera's face from the glances he steals. She doesn't respond, though.

“She refuses to take them back,” Ser Rolland interjects, and Podrick had almost forgotten his presence. “You've been her heir a long time, Ser Podrick.”

“Have I now?” He exclaims, because it hadn't occurred to him that Ser Rolland would know anything about him at all and he hadn't considered Brienne's gift was perhaps not a desperate gamble but a well-considered path she'd been long treading.

“Today, we will have answers to all our questions. And you will still be the same landed knight you were yesterday, and the day before – but by sundown, we will all have a path forward. Have you considered yours, Ser Podrick? Have you considered what you will do with peace?”

“I have,” he says carefully, and now he's as pensive and thoughtful as Lady Meera at his shoulder, for his deepest desires and wishes are too precious and tender to lay bare on the dusty path to the dungeons. It will depend on what's decided today and what Brienne chooses to do in the aftermath. He doesn't fear saying that aloud.

But if he's honest, he also wants to know where Meera is going. And perhaps even if she'll let him follow.

And if those paths lie in opposite directions...there's no use borrowing trouble or anticipating problems. All they can do is wait and see what unfolds.

They divide them when they get to the cells. Meera is put in King Jon's cell and they tell him to wait outside it. Ser Rolland is directed to escort Tyrion, who is being taken directly up to the council. Podrick pales when he sees him, the tiny chained form of the Imp, his beard and hair grown shaggy and his clothing in stinking unwashed tatters. But as he's led past Podrick, Tyrion's gaze finds the wrapped hilt of Widow's Wail in its Lannister-red scabbard, tucked beneath his closed fist, and he looks up and winks.

So it depends on Tyrion too, he supposes. He wonders how to serve so many masters, how it's possible to love this many people this much.

The Stark sisters have a plan, that much is clear. But even Brienne and Ser Davos know only bits and pieces of it, he is sure, and he knows much less. It's one thing to sue for peace and another to achieve it. He's not frightened, just uneasy. It's a long wait. Down here in the dungeons, he can't track the progress of the sun against the sky and he has no idea how much time is passing, but his feet ache and he's taking to shifting his weight back and forth to give them rest. He sips from his canteen now and again to keep thirst at bay.

The Unsullied take no water, move not at all. They are disciplined in a way that Podrick has never been. Brienne was harsh sometimes, and rigorous, and dealt him many a blow, but she taught him to move. They never stood at attention, even in formation.

Before, he'd never seen the Eastern soldiers as anything but a tenuously allied force, hostile because politics were hostile and the lines weren't clearly drawn. But now he feels a rush of pity for these men who followed their queen across a sea to a foreign land and saw her betrayed and cut down. She was not a just ruler from Podrick's perspective, or even a legitimate one, but these men followed her to the ends of the earth because they loved her. It counts for something, he thinks, that sort of devotion...even if it says more about the person who bestows it than the one who receives it. He remembers the tender affection between the Dragon Queen's Unsullied commander and her beautiful counselor, and Podrick had never seen love so courtly as their devotion. If that kind of love can't buy peace, what can?

Once, Podrick had thought Brienne's vague allusion to all Gods being one on Tarth as a sort of heresy, had feared lest the gentle septon and his faithful dog read her wrong and accuse her of it. It's only long years that have taught him the wisdom of it. Brienne and her sworn oaths by old gods and new, serving not whichever Lord or Lady she fancied but something greater. The wolves, the lions, the King beyond the Wall and the knowing Smallfolk from the Stormlands, made lords...all of them bent knees to her, though none of them would call it that. She served their better angels, and in return they loved her deeply and sincerely.

And now Brienne has knighted Meera. At Bran's request.

Her oath to Lady Catelyn has not just come full circle. It's a spiral, drawing out everything good and true and born of brighter things. If the abyss draws inward, Brienne's light – and Meera's and Sansa's and Arya's – burns out from within it, defies it.

Maidens and mothers and wives and widows and Lady Catelyn's lamp bathing wisdom down on them all...even stone hearts can waken. Even stone trees give refuge to the birds.

The dungeon is not a Sept. He thinks the golden peace he feels might be a form of blasphemy. He's drunk on sunlight in the depths, willing summer to come. In the name of the old gods and the new. Theon's drowned God...but what is dead may never die. Stannis and his Lord of Light and Fire and Shadow...and his priestess who burned herself against Death when it mattered. Bran and Meera and their laughing trees and blooded ravens and pure hearts and honest souls. The seven, hobbled and crippled by long years of endless war and Cersei's wildfire, but he remembers a kind man with his merry dog on a road somewhere in the Riverlands. Podrick brought him a bundle of sticks, was scratching his mutt behind the ears.  
  
“Thank you, Lord Commander,” the old Septon said, building up the fire.

Pod had recoiled, thinking it a jape at his expense, cruel mockery because he'd revealed that once he had a dog named Hero and because of Brienne's sword...but the man had clucked and chuckled in the face of his bluster. “The light is all over you both. The road is a long and difficult one, but don't lose faith, son. And hold on to hope as much as you can.”

It was still ludicrous. He would never be Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, whatever was decided in the dragon pit above him. But it had been a long road, that much was true. And he's tried to hold on to faith and hope in the years between.

He believes in summer.

He holds onto it now, as tight as he can, feeling the hilt of the sword beneath his fist.

Widow's Wail.

But he's heard the widow's wail, and it cleaved his heart in two. He mislikes the blade's name, its history, the connotation.

A sword cannot be renamed lest it is changed in some way for some new bearer. He counts as a new bearer, he supposes.

 _I will write Lord Selwyn._ _It will always be a blow to Brienne, this blade,_ _b_ _ut it need not be a mockery. I'll replace the rubies with sapphire roses_ – and here Gendry can help him – _and I'll call it_ …

He thinks of Meera's stories.

In the land of always winter, Brandon did not have his father's blade. But he had a wolf, and the wolf hunted, and they lived despite the ice.

Podrick will have the rubies changed to sapphires. And he'll rename the sword for the wolf that fed them in the darkness.

_Summer._


	9. Summer Dragons for a Summer King

“My Lady? There's a letter for you.”

Before it was merely young Karstark, and then that baker, but now the voice belongs to Ser Rolland. Podrick will be next, and she won't be able to refuse him. Best to dry her tears now. 

She's been crying for what must be hours, her forehead pressed to half of Ned Stark's ancestral blade, her beloved Oathkeeper, thinking of Lady Catelyn and wishing she'd lived to see this, lived to see Brandon on his weirwood throne. 

King Brandon the Blessed. 

The ravens fly. The wolf mother howls, not in anguish but in triumph. 

She cries because Cat died not knowing this was possible, but it would have soothed her grieving heart. She cries because she thinks it's what Jaime would have wanted, that it would have soothed his troubled soul. She cries great racking sobs of relief. She doesn't know what peace will look like, but summer is surely near and many of the people she loved most aren't here to see it but many of them  _are_ and that feels like mercy.

She dips a rag in her basin and washes off her face, slides Oathkeeper back into its sheath. She is examining her eyes – red and swollen – in a small looking glass, when she hears low tones outside her tent. She's run out of time. 

Helaena bursts through the flap, waving a parchment. “A ship came in from White Harbor with letters while you were all meeting. His grace asked us to see that you got this one.”

Her cousin studies her face, sees that she's been crying, and Brienne takes the letter but blinks and turns away. It's useless to hide her grief, but she does. “Thank you, Lady Storm.”

It's a dismissal. She means it as one, but her cousin laughs merrily. “Lady Nightsong.”

“Truly?” Relief washes over her. She is a terrible daughter who, by somehow surviving despite herself, has robbed her cousin of being the Evenstar. It shames her, even though she knows it shouldn't. But Nightsong was her portion too once, when she'd been the future Lady Caron, the child bride of Ser Rolland's trueborn brother. How fitting. “ _When_?”

“After Yara Greyjoy declared the Iron Islands an independent kingdom but said they'd bend to King Bran as long as he lived in memory of her brother and before Quentyn Martell said he would rule Dorne as a Sovereign prince but leave Ned Dayne to guard the king. He legitimized Rolland, named him his father's heir. It's been an...eventful...afternoon. Dinner's in a half hour, but his grace asked us to see that you got that first.”

“Thank you, Helaena.” Brienne swallows the lump in her throat, attempts a crooked smile. “I'm glad for you.”

“I know,” her cousin says, ducking back through the flap. 

She sighs, resolves to put Catelyn and Jaime aside and focus on the present. 

“Ser Brienne of Tarth,” reads a spidery hand she doesn't recognize. The paper is familiar, however; it's from Winterfell's solar, flecked with tiny specks of red Weirwood leaves, sealed with gray wax and a wolf's head. There is another bump, another seal folded within.

She peels back the wolf seal and unfolds the sheet. The one below bears an icy blue wax and a thumbprint where there should be a seal. Strange. 

She reads the cover first.    
  
_'My dearest daughter -,'_ it begins, and Brienne knows that she holds someone else's letter, that somehow the direction was writ wrong, but she keeps reading,  _'Your kindness to me when you left Winterfell was balm to an old woman's soul, and has kept me warm.'_

And now Brienne understands. Tormund had wooed her by sending a great Wolf's pelt to her rooms when he returned before the battle, and she'd kept it folded in a corner while Jaime had slept in her bed, tried to return it only to have Tormund refuse to take it back, said it made a fine gift for a pretty bride. 

But when they left Winterfell for King's Landing, Brienne had felt uneasy taking it from the North, and taking Tormund's favor with her. So when Lord Glover and Lady Sansa's ancient great aunt had bid them a safe journey, Brienne had shyly offered to tuck it around the old woman's knees. The lady the Starks called Old Nan called her a good girl and held her cheek for a moment and bid them to hurry because she'd lived well past her time and there wouldn't be a Stark in Winterfell long if they tarried. 

It was a trifling kindness. 

_'The great wildling hums Jeyne's song, told me your squire taught him the melody but he can't remember the words. Jeyne's was a summer spirit, but winter was all over her because once a headstrong girl refused to be cloaked by any gods but the old ones. Was it pride or pity for the children of winter that led to their grief? Either way, it was long ago. I may perhaps see one more rose bloom before I go._

_He cannot write, nor read, but the king of winter bends his knee to you, child.'_

Brienne has no idea what this means. Perhaps she means Jenny of Oldstones. It was Brienne's favorite song when she was a child, before her father's grief barred the singers from their halls. She'd confessed that once to Podrick, who'd learned to sing it from a bard in the Riverlands and hummed it sometimes when the nights were especially cold and bleak. 

_'You loved your Goldenhand the Just. Love is a strange thing; I loved the truest knight in the realm once, and no one ever again, but there is no shame in grasping happiness when it's offered. Life is short and love is sweet. I serve only as a scribe. Follow your heart – it will lead you true.'_

It's good advice, but presumptuous and strange coming from a near stranger. 

_'I dreamed of you often, and prayed to see you once in this lifetime. Ask my nephew to tell you the story of the Dragonfly's Egg. He misliked it as a boy, but as with many stories it gets sweeter with time.'_

Now Brienne understands. The old woman is confused, as the old sometimes are. Imagining her to be someone else, perhaps. Or just lost in visions of the past. But the well wishes are kindly meant, and the gratitude for the pelt is sincere, so despite the confusion it's an encouraging letter. 

_'Alysanne.'_

She breaks open the second letter, sees the same handwriting, and expects it to be more of the same. But if the first one was the meandering tangents of a very old, somewhat confused crone the next one seems to have been penned by a raving lunatic. 

_'Ser Lady Brienne the Blue of Seven Kingdoms,_

_A good woman only lets herself be taken by the man she wants. I offered to steal you from your chamber, and you refused, and you took the man you desired. I wished you happiness and swore to be your friend and meant it. You needed a son, they told me, to rule your summer island, and he needed a knight as a father. They say the birds tell them you're a widow now, and I'm sorry for that._

_I'm no knight. But I want you to know that if you need sons and daughters, I would give them to you. You could visit when you wanted to, raise them as your own. I'd not ask anything of them, or of you, but they'd have the Gift from me._

_Whatever you decide, you're the finest woman I ever met. I was honored to fight with you, and you'll always have a friend beyond the wall._

_Tormund (Giantsson)'_

It seems that Podrick was right after all. 

Tormund speaks of a Gift, but he doesn't understand the one he's given her. 

Or perhaps he does, she thinks. Perhaps he understands her after all. Because now it isn't just rumors in an encampment, now his suit is real and tangible. He doesn't name himself king, but he is one. The king of always winter, the king beyond the wall the smallfolk call him. She's a recent widow with a suitor in a far off land. If she ever stoops to marry a fool, it will at least be by her own folly. It won't be her people or her duty or her father who force that on her. 

Tormund has given her time. 

When she goes to dinner, the redness in her eyes is almost gone, and her heart is almost light. 

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

Meera thinks she's half drunk, perhaps. It's certainly the most wine she's ever drank, the coronation of King Bran in the Stark tent. Lord Tyrion, shaved and bathed and dressed, is the merriest cupbearer she's ever seen, laughing and joking and feasting. Her father is as free with his stories as she's ever seen him, holding even Edmure Tully with rapt attention. The tourney at Harrenhal haunts her father still, but tonight even the ghosts are glad and full of laughter. 

Podrick is drunk as well, wavering on his feet a bit as he weaves toward Gendry, draws him aside for a few moments, and then proceeds to Tyrion. That conversation is more subdued; there is grief on both their faces as they converse. 

She is so intent watching them that she doesn't see Gendry depart, or her father and Tully and Arryn and Royce. 

Bronn and Ser Rolland left almost immediately after the feasting, to see to the food for the city along with Hot Pie. Gilly and Helaena left a bit after to return to baby Sam. The king has not ordered them out, not that she's seen or heard, but when she realizes the room is clearing she looks over at Bran where he sits with Samwell. He motions down with his hand, and she nods. 

Brienne stands to leave as well, but Sansa whispers 'stay' and she sits back down. 

And soon it is just this group of them, Samwell and Bran and his sisters, Brienne and Podrick, and Tyrion. And Meera. A hush falls over them. He is the king but he is still Bran. She fed him when he was hungry, dried the tears that froze on his cheeks...he hasn't been that Bran for a long time, but to kneel to him as king...that is stranger still. 

“I have named my hand, my master of ships, my Grand Maester, my Wardens of the City, Dorne, the Iron Islands, the Riverlands, the North...but there are yet seats on the council, and they need filling.”

Tyrion slides into his seat, smiles slyly, winks at Sansa. Podrick takes his seat between Meera and Brienne, draws his chair toward the table. 

“Oathkeeper.”

Brienne slides to her feet, unsheathing her blade as she stands, resting the point flat on the back of her left hand, offering her sword to her king. 

“I did not mean the blade, Ser Brienne. Ice it was. My father's sword, until it cleaved and you swore your portion to my mother. It's a fine blade, wielded by a true knight. I would have you as my Lord Commander if you would swear to protect me only half so well as you protected my sisters.”

She is on her knees in an instant, and there are silent tears pouring down her cheeks. 

“You are in a haste to throw away your life for your king, Brienne.”

“I swore a holy oath to your mother, your grace.”

“And you met it.” Bran pauses, looks far away into the distance, seems to see forever. “Your oaths to Renly, too. Lord Royce's son died defending you on that score. You have been a king's shield before, and my sister's sworn sword, and our defender of the north. You have earned this place. But I would have your questions, Ser Brienne, before your oaths.”  
  
“My questions?”

“A person reveals themselves by the questions they ask, my lady.”

Meera would ask, she thinks, about things like Lordships and babies and vows. She and Brienne are both the last of their houses, and have duties at home, even if they are far off in the future. 

Meera is surprised when she asks instead for a children's tale.

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

She ought to ask about Tarth, she thinks. But Tarth will have Podrick, and Helaena and their children. Tarth will be fine. 

She does not have Jaime. But she has just been offered his legacy, and she means to grasp it with both hands. 

She doesn't have questions, she has only her burning desire for purpose, for fulfillment, for a holy oath to serve a king she loves. To serve peace. 

But Bran means to know her by her questions, and she meant to ask him one. Someday. Not here, not now...but it will do. “I had a note from your aunt Nan. She said to ask you the story of the Dragonfly's Egg.”

His grace smiles gently. 

“Oh, I love that one,” Sansa interjects. 

“I mislike it,” Arya says, pulling a face at her sister.

“It grows sweeter with time. You tell it, sister.” Brandon waves to Sansa. 

“Alright. Once there was a young squire, the bravest and truest and most honorable man in the whole kingdom. The man he served was struck down, but before he died he knighted his squire. And all the birds and trees in the forest bore witness, and vowed to watch over the young knight and help him on his way. But he was humbly born and no one knew him, and even he couldn't remember if the knighting had been a fever dream or true. He resolved to enter a tourney, not for the prize but to pledge his sword to whoever could best him in battle. But he won the tourney and the prize; a strange little squire and a small blue egg which shone like ice but burned like fire when he held it in his palm. Some said it was a cold but costly sapphire trinket, and some said it was a dragon's egg for the scales carved on its surface and the fire that seemed to boil within it. It was no bigger than an acorn, and even the Maesters didn't seem to know anything about where it came from or where it meant to go. 

The young knight swore his sword and his shield to his prize and he resolved to take it home, even if home was a long and perilous journey and he didn't know where to begin. 

He set off, bearing the egg on his shield. He carried it West to ask the gulls if they'd ever seen such a thing. He was almost eaten by a lioness, but just as she was about to pounce she saw the egg and sat back on her haunches. She offered to carry it in her mane for a night, where perhaps it would hatch from her warmth. But in the morning the egg was the same and the lioness had changed to a beautiful woman.

The knight wanted to stay with her. For a moment he considered setting the egg into a necklace, and wooing her with it. But his vow was more important. So he took his egg and ventured south. A snake offered her nest, but in the morning the egg showed no signs of hatching and the snake was a woman with a honeyed tongue who again begged him to stay. His vows held him to his purpose. 

He went to the east, where the stags were grazing in their woods, but a doe looked at the egg fearfully and would not even offer to warm it. 

Only the north was left. But the north was dark and cold and full of terrors. A dragon wouldn't hatch there. Still, he'd vowed to journey until he found answers, and perhaps the north held clues. It was a long road, difficult. He had only the birds and trees for company, and his squire for warmth, but at last he came to a wolf standing under a heart tree and drinking from a black pool. The wolf looked at him warily as he held up the egg and asked if she knew what it was and where it had come from. When she shook her head, he sat down next to her, bowed his head, and told her of his vows and his many journeys. “Where is left to try?” he asked her.   
  
“I do not know,” said the wolf, “But the ravens led me here. Give it to me for a night, and I'll warm it even though you tell me it will bring me doom.”

“Not doom!” cried the knight.

“It is doom to greet the evening star as a wolf and the morning star as a mere woman,” said the wolf, “But I do not argue with crows or men or the gods, so give it here.”

So he gave it to the wolf, and they slept beside the pool under the tree. And in the morning, the wolf was a beautiful maiden, but the egg had hatched. The scales fell inward into the shape of a rose, and in the rose there was a dragonfly, beating her wings against the sky. 

And the lady sat down at the pool and wept, and the knight knelt before her, holding the dragonfly in one hand and the sapphire rose in the other. He asked if she wept so bitterly because she was a wolf no more. 

“I weep because winter is coming and dragonflies cannot survive in the cold. You must take it south, before snows come again, and now I have no fur to keep me warm when the cold winds blow.”

“Summer always comes again, my lady.”

“As constant as the dawn. But some nights are long, and mayhap one or both of us will not live to see its end. Be that as it is, your dragon's egg has hatched now, and dragonflies need roses else they starve...so you must take her home with you. A summer dragon for a summer king, when one comes again. Perhaps my summer king will ride one to the land of always winter and roses will bloom there as they did in days of old.”

“Your king, my lady? Not ours?”

“Mine, brave ser.”

So the knight took up his dragonfly and left the sapphire with the lady and he went south again, to the summer kingdoms. And there they wait, the dragonflies, for summer to come and roses to bloom beyond the wall again.”

Everyone claps politely when Sansa ends her story with a little nod and a smile. 

No one else is standing. No one else sees Arya in the corner, wiping tears away, but Brienne does, and it cuts her to the quick, and she studies Bran. He wants questions, does he?

“Why did you mislike that story?”

Arya thinks Brienne is talking to her, starts. “Because she stays a human...because she never gets back to her wolf form. And for what? A dragonfly? It would have to be a very large dragonfly or a very small king. It's a farce.”

“It's romantic,” Sansa chides. Brienne thinks she might be holding Tyrion's hand under the table, and isn't that strange. 

“The wolf had cubs. A son and a grandson and great-grandson. The elder ones fell to the Ironborn, but the youngest...he carried me through the land of always winter. Hodor.”

“The wolf is _Old Nan_? Well, I guess it _was_ a very large dragonfly.” Arya lets out a bark of laughter from the corner. 

“He died for Bran. Beyond the wall.” Meera says from behind her, her voice grave and earnest. Meera understands the gravity of this as Arya – who heard the story often enough to know it by heart – does not. “You know that, and yet you mock it? It's your Old Nan – gods, how patronizing, call her by her name, call her Alysanne Stark – and Ser Duncan the Tall. The Egg is Aegon...the dragonfly is Jenny. Do you...do you see _nothing_?”

And suddenly Brienne sees what Brandon wants her to.  _My dearest daughter_ . 

“Summerhall,” Sansa breathes, looking at Tyrion who just shakes his head. “The Dragonflies died at Summerhall, all of them but Hodor.” 

“Not all of them.” The king studies her from his wooden throne.

It a strange sort of kingship, verging on sorcery, but she thinks she understands him. “Duncan the  _Small_ ?”

“Well, compared to his wife and her father...most men seemed small.”

“My grandfather – was...was...”

“A dragonfly.”

“My mother – was...” 

“Most say she died. Some whisper she was carried from the inferno on her grandfather's shield, washed up on some island in the East waiting for the age where dragons give way to dragonflies, when summer comes again.”

“I will be your Lord Commander,” she says, because she can't think to say anything else. A few moments ago, she would have named her father the most honest man she knows...but now she knows that he's a man with a secret, has always been a man with a secret...now she knows what he's been protecting her from. 

Reckless marriages, children from the other side of a wolf's pelt. Rejected by the Maesters and the Seven in their holy septs...the Gods are seven-in-one...we worship the old gods and the new, we serve peace...dragonflies indeed. Flitting from whatever lord or lady…

“I know. By the old Gods and the new.”

“Indeed.”

“But not for life. And not rejecting all titles or marriages or children. If you serve me, it is only to guard the realms of men. If you serve me, it is only to serve peace. If I must be king, I will be a summer one.”

“Your grace, I am prepared -,” she begins, because take it. _Take all of it._ She had the man she loved in her bed and made a wreck of it. 

“You are. But what of your brothers in arms? It's a senseless rule, born of Aegon's fear and paranoia.”

And then she has no more questions, even though she disagrees and means to foreswear everything and serve for life, the way the Kingsguard of old did, the way Jaime meant to. 

No more except one, she thinks, kneeling and offering the hilt of her sword to Catelyn's son. She asks it quietly, as Bran tests the weight of her blade in his hand, a childish tilt to his smile as his hand closes around it. 

“Was her name Argella?”

“It was Gael, for a time. A winter child in a summer kingdom, who walked into the sea in her grief for everyone she loved and was loved by. She left a dragonfly. You have carried us, as the wolf and her young knight meant. And yet if you would serve me, serve the realm...you must know your own secrets. If ever some man should come to you – to any of us here in this room – whispering your mother's secrets, I would have you recognize them. You are gentle as a dove; there is no cunning in you. Mistrust – caution – honor itself, but no cunning. Never forget, Brienne the Blue, that you are a dragonfly bearing a summer king.”

“I will not. I swear my sword and shield to you, by the Old Gods and the New. King Bran the Blessed, Long May You Reign.” 

“And do you relinquish all claim to the throne, and swear to serve the realm instead of yourself, as long as you live?”

“I have no claim, but I swear.”

Bran hands her sword back to her, even laughs. She can't remember seeing him laugh before; he's always so grave and quiet and observant. “I think perhaps only Duncan was so quick to throw away a crown for a hedge full of roses.”

She turns. Podrick looks as shell shocked as she feels, and Tyrion. Even Arya looks thoughtful and chastened, thrown out of her merrymaking by the surreal mummer's reel that's just taken place. She crooks her lips at Meera, the only one who seemed to understand and support her, and gets a crooked grin in reply. 

But Sansa. Sansa looks triumphant. Brienne's eyes narrow. Her father...but  _Sansa_ ? 

“How long have you known?”

“I asked Bran when I sent you south. Was there anything about you I should know that I didn't? Any...conflicting loyalties.”

“You made sure we took our leave of your aunt before we left Winterfell.”

“I did.”

“Thank you, your grace.” 

“We are cousins, Brienne. Friends, I hope,” she leans toward Tyrion, who has tears in his eyes, and lays her cheek on the top of his head, “Good sisters, by the old gods and the new. I kept your secrets even from you. I hope you forgive me.” 

Brienne is not given time to answer, time for her hundred revisions, time to deflect and self-deprecate and use all her petty shields. Her king speaks. “Lord Commander?”

“Your grace?”

“Do I have your assent to appoint Ser Podrick and Ser Meera to our kingsguard?”

He does not need her assent, but she nods. 

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

An unkindness of ravens arrives before Lord Selwyn. The maester brings a basket of scrolls to the table at breakfast and Jaime stares at them balefully across his plate of eggs. He is desperate for their news, but they aren't meant for him. He sees her looping script at the edge of one, and he wants to unbury it, tear it open, feast on it. 

If he had two hands, he would steal it – read it and reseal it and put it back. If he had two hands, he would still be a thief, but he only has one arm now, let alone hand. He'd make a mess and never get away with it. 

The eggs on Selwyn's untouched plate are hard and cold by the time the Lord bustles in, still shaking dust from his cloak, his cheeks red and his eyes merry. He hails Ser Brynden cheerfully, claps him on the back and slides into his seat. “We have news, then. Tea, please,” he addresses to his steward. 

Jaime squirms in his seat, a bit disgusted that Selwyn is so blithe and merry. Who is king? What of Tyrion? 

Selwyn picks through them as the tea is poured, making little piles. There are no less than a half dozen from Brienne, one from…he thinks it might be Sansa…

“Hmmm, here's one for you,” he says, handing it across his little piles as the steward excuses himself. “From young Seaworth.”

Terrific. He pretends to care what the youth has to say as he flicks it open. ' _I have been made squire to the Lord Commander of the King's Guard. May the mother's mercy find you in your healing. I remember you in my prayers, and keep your secrets as my own. Devan Seaworth._ '

That might tell him something, if he had an ounce of knowledge who the king was, but he doesn't. Lord Selwyn has cracked open a letter of his own in the interim; it's one of Brienne's. He lets out a hearty bark of laughter as he scans it, rubbing a hand over his eyes in relief. 

He tosses the scroll to Jaime, who somehow manages to catch it with his left hand. 

He can't imagine any sort of news could lead to  _merriment_ . Especially not from Brienne's hand. 

But then he reads it, and he laughs too. 

_'We are all in this rookery, every Lord in the land. Tarth has assented to King Brandon of House Stark._

_Father, forgive me. It's not only my oath that led me here; I truly believe he will be a wise, just king._

_The Lady Sansa traded her lion for the independence of the North beyond the Neck. Lord Tyrion is to be the hand of this peace. Lord Reed to reopen Moat Cailin as the gateway between the realm and its sister. Dorne somehow not openly revolting. My Lady and poor Greyjoy's sister have come to a constrained sort of peace, bought with their brother's blood._

_More to follow._

_Brienne'_

He is laughing so hard he's crying, and then he's just crying, and Lord Selwyn has moved on with his messages and is pretending not to notice his tears. 

Because Brandon Stark is  _king_ . 

And the things he did for love have somehow become peace. 

And Tyrion is his  _Hand_ ? 

That's ridiculous. There's no such thing as such grace. No such thing as happy endings. 

Jaime has never known summer. Every rose he ever touched hid a dagger or was buried ten feet deep in snow. 

“For you,” Selwyn says, handing him another letter. 

He recognizes the hand. His heart skips in his chest, and he feels a tingle down his missing arm. His fingers shake as he trades Brienne's surreal scroll for the one made out to Ser Brynden Stone in Tyrion's hand.    
  
' _Some golden lion days are done but mine are just beginning. Golden Hand the Just, the Lion of Night; it is a great, terrible jape. A lovely young dragon is dead; my sour sister is dead. Rhaegar's child of ice has sworn himself to be the Last Ranger, the rider between the Freefolk and the North. I have a dear, sweet friend in the Queen of the North, but a wife in title only. Peace has a bitter taste, but Spring a sweet one._

_Tarry for a season.'_

So he's to remain dead, then. The hand of the king has effectively told him to stuff something where his mouth should be and abandoned him...to his wool slippers and warm tea in Lord Selwyn's bright solar over the sea. 

It's not the Wall. Poor Jon Snow. 

But the King of the North's dog is there, and his sister will reign as Queen on one side and his best friend as...some kind of tribal chieftain...on the other...so maybe that's not hell to Aegon Snow of Houses Stark and Targaryen and probably Moon Boy for all he knows. 

Maybe that is some sort of resolution. 

Brandon Stark is king.  _The things I do for love_ . 

He pushes. But some children have the gift of flight, and a raven takes wing and winds up on a Weirwood Throne that has wheels. 

That is ridiculous. But it has a sort of beauty. 

Lord Selwyn is crying, clenching a letter in his fist. Great sobs rack his body and there are tears streaming down his face. 

It is grief. And Jaime is frightened of what he'll find in the scroll clutched in the man's fist, but all he can think is that…

Tyrion is fine. Brandon is King. And Brienne's life was the price for that. Because what else could have driven his merry host to such a terrible state as this, hunched over with his tears falling on the parchment?

He is a thief after all. He grabs the parchment from Selwyn's fist and flicks it open, preparing himself for the very worst news he can imagine. 

_I have been made Lord Commander of some kind of enlightened new kingsguard, which so far is just Podrick, Ser Lady Meera, and myself. But I have agreed to sit on the small council, and try to uphold the best in our traditions, by the Old Gods and the new._

_This may delay a long overdue visit. His Grace offered a strange tale about dragonflies and wolves on raising me to his council._

_In the past twenty-four hours, I have sworn fealty to Cat's son and Jaime's sin, and I am wrecked, father. I hardly know what I am swearing or being offered. I light candles for the crone to light her lamp and guide my steps, but I am adrift. Still, I love you. I forgive you._

_Whatever is true, I've tried to bring honor to Tarth. For you. And for my mother's blessed memory._

_All my love,_

_Brienne_

_(Ser Brienne of Tarth, Lord Commander of the Ravensguard)_

**Jaime's sin.**

**Lord Commander.**

_I pushed a boy out of a tower._

_The things I do for love._   
  
_I dreamed of you._

Tyrion's letter lies abandoned on the table. 

But still...he's the Kingslayer. He left his vows and rode north in defiance of a queen and it meant his sister's death. Brienne's known about Brandon for years, even if Selwyn doesn't. Hearing Jaime called a sinner shouldn't shock him to grief and tears. 

And while Selwyn has been unnaturally patient about the whole Lady Catelyn business and seems to have been friendly with her uncle, he can't imagine the thought of a half-Tully on a wheeled wooden chair would bring the man to an abyss of grief. 

“I'm sorry,” he says, remembering Jaime, remembering himself, and with a great shudder he draws himself up. “Lord Commander of the King's Guard. It is a great honor to our house. My lady wife...well, we all weave our dreams for one another in our youth. We do not all live to see them bear fruit.”

So it was grief after all. He cries for the wife he lost in his youth. 

Jaime had Cersei in his youth...and not as his wife. As a sister, as his blood, as his lover, as his mirrored desire. But he wove those dreams and they were nightmares. He much prefers the tender yearnings he gave voice to there in Winterfell, under the heart tree, by the pool, the hopeful visions of his battered middle age. So he can't really understand...but he understands grief, and loss and hopelessness and despair…

“Once there was a Knight of the Kingsguard, and he served all of his kings and queens badly, even though he loved them. And he bent his knee over and over to tyrants and torturers, offered his sword over and over and betrayed all their trust. And the miracle was, they kept him in the white cloak, even knowing he was the darkest knave to ever soil it. They even made him Lord Commander, because in those days the King's Guard was a pantomime and a joke. _She_ is an honor to the office...titles are wind and words.”

“Mead?”

Selwyn is pouring the drink into their empty teacups, his tears dried. They toast the new Lord Commander, and the promise of peace. It fortifies them for the task ahead, of sorting through the basket of letters from the city. 


	10. The Book of Brothers

“Brought you some bread,” Arya says, handing over a loaf wrapped in a bit of cheesecloth and sitting down beside her. 

Meera unwraps it and giggles. “It's a frog.”   
  
Arya shrugs. “A gift from Lord Hot Pie, Warden of Harrenhal. But that's just Hot Pie to you, because he swears his bloody grace only meant it as a jape. I haven't had the heart to break it to him that Bran really means for him to run the inn at the God's Eye, or that he's probably going to wheel himself onto the island for half the year. You've got to ease people into great responsibility. How's the King's Guard?”

Meera shrugs. She should say: it's wonderful. Or it's frightening. Or it's a great honor, and a lot of responsibility. But it also doesn't feel real, that Bran is king...the past couple of days have been a blur. When her father goes home...then perhaps the grief of it will strike her. 

But for now she's just sitting outside a tent while the small council meets. Podrick has gone off somewhere with Lord Baratheon. Bran is king. The Warden of Harrenhal has sent her some frog-shaped bread he baked himself in a camp kitchen. 

It beats the north; she's not exhausted or cold or hungry or terrified or grieving. 

“Any resolution to the Dothraki problem?” The bread is good, buttery and crumbly. She's bitten an eye off the frog with relish. 

“The Lady of Tarth has kindly offered to loan me her father's ships to take the host and their mounts to Pentos, and from there they will ride East to bring the Dawn to their own people in the Great Grass Sea. Gendry has offered all the remaining Baratheon ships to the Unsullied, to hasten them on their journey, so long as they return his brother on their travels.”

“He has a brother?” She's bitten off another eye; it's heavenly. 

“Edric Baratheon. Rolland and Davos got him away from Stannis, and Gendry asked Bran to legitimize him. He's young, but he'll be a good steward for Storm's End.”

“Is Gendry staying in the city?” Meera leaves off taking nibbles of the bread. This is the first time Arya has sought her out as a companion, and now she wonders why. 

Arya shrugs, screws her face up in distaste. “I'm not. I didn't conquer anything. I faced death because I love my brother, and if somehow that act meant something to the Old Gods and forged a pact, so be it. I don't care about pacts. My wolf is free. My pack is safe. I want to know what lies in the West.”

Meera reasons that out, aloud. “Your brother is king here, your sister queen in the north. Your cousin will range at the wall, and treat with the Free Folk. In the east, they will tell how you brought down a snow wight and a lion and dragon. I don't blame you for going West. It's the last free place left.”

“I thought you wouldn't. Sansa does.”

“She loves you. She doesn't want to lose you.”

Arya shrugs. She breaks a leg off Meera's frog without asking and smiles as she stuffs it into her mouth. “I won't be lost, just traveling. Gendry wants to sail with me. Told me Hot Pie will make a better lord than he will, since he knows how to use a fork and all.”

“Do you want him to?”

“I won't be his lady, but I might be his forest lass. I just...I don't want that life, Lady of Storms End, Lightbringer, any of it. Especially now, after everything we've seen and been through...I can't be no one and still be Arya Stark. And I am Arya Stark...but if Nymeria could sail off into the West and have adventures, why can't I? I like adventures, traveling, and I like doing it with Gendry. Sansa wants to be a queen, she likes making lists and choosing advisors and having meetings. I mean to sail as far away from any meetings as I can, and then _keep sailing_ until I know I'm safe from them.”

“Your sister will come around.”

“She'll learn to live with it. The Queen in the North finds a way. Always.” Arya breaks off another piece of Meera's bread, studies her closely. “And you? Is this the life you want?”

Meera weaves her fingers around her knee, stares out at the campfires around them and the paths leading down to the city. 

She's never lived in a city; it's an adventure. 

“When I was little, my dad used to take me fishing. My brother was more delicate, and loved books, and he and mother would hide themselves in the reading room, but I was robust and curious and we went out to walk the bogs and hunt and visit the villages. 

“Everywhere we went, my father was beloved. We heard a thousand stories from the people we met, but he rarely told his own. Only deep in the forest when we were alone, he would talk of his own youth, how he dreamed of adventures, how he dreamed of visiting the children of the forest. Singers said they still lived on the Isle of Faces, and deep in the north, beyond the wall...and he wanted nothing more than to venture out and talk to them. He finds such solace in the birds and trees and bees and water, and the children are said to hold their oldest songs...so when he was young, he set out on a great adventure to find the children and beg a song from them. 

“He found them, and he heard the song, but it brought him such grief. I always knew that he and my mother lost almost everyone they loved outside the neck, but it took me years to realize the far off events of the rebellion and the wars were his blue roses and red dragons and fierce wolves. Paper lions...white bulls...swords of the morning.

' _Do you miss them, father?'_ I'd ask, because even as a child I could feel the weight if not the shape of his sadness. ' _To hear their song is to always keep hearing it. You'll understand, lass, when you bring Dawn to the north',_ he'd tell me _._ I didn't know what he meant. He never told me everything, just that he was preparing us both for a great adventure in the far north, searching for the children of the forest. 

“So my childhood dreams grew up around the shape of my purpose. The great adventure north. We would see awesome and terrible and wonderful things and then come back to raise our own children and hunt and fish and care for our people and listen to their stories. I never saw beyond that. Never realized Jojen wouldn't come back from it. Never realized that by the end I wouldn't quite feel like I fit anywhere. 

“But then I went to the Isle of Faces with Bran and father, and stayed on the shore while they made a summer pact with the children. I hunted and fished and slept and dreamed. It was wonderful. 

“We made peace…peace with the Others, peace with the stranger, whatever you call it. And now we have to go on struggling to make it with our fellows. That's a longer road, though it's hard to imagine it will be a harder one. Protecting Bran – protecting his summer kingdom – it's a good purpose. I'm happy.”

“It feels dangerous to be happy – like it will be snatched away.”

“It feels strange, like an old song I'd forgotten how to sing.”

“Songs! Come on, let's find Pod and Gendry. I have an idea.” Arya jumps up, brushing crumbs off the front of the tunic, smiling like a madwoman. 

“I can't, Bran is - “

“With Brienne and Sansa. He wants _one_ of you with him, not all of you hovering over him like flies or sitting in the dirt waiting for him.”

“Podrick tried to get me a chair, but -”

Arya pulls on her sleeve. “You said you didn't want one, come on, up. I'll race you.”

She follows the younger, smaller girl down the hill to the Smith's tent, laughing. For a moment they are maidens in summer, with summer cares and summer hearts. The sun is bright above them as they stumble in the well trod dust, laughing. Arya beats her, as Meera knew would happen, and they tumble headlong into the tent. Gendry and Podrick are sitting cross-legged in the corner, talking quietly. Podrick's red and black blade is lying between them, the hilt glinting gold and blue and black and silver and red. 

Meera – Meera who holds Dark Sister on her hip, as if the most priceless blade in the kingdom doesn't brush her boot with every step – is breathless as she looks at it. 

“Bran will love it,” Arya whispers, kneeling in the dirt to study it the pommel up close. “The Raven is a nice touch. One of the Lannister rubies?”

Gendry nods. Meera's always thought he looked uncomfortable at the meetings, as if his clothing was too tight or too itchy or ill fitting, but kneeling on the ground in his thick leather apron he looks flushed with pride. He bends his face close to Arya's as he shows her the details.    
  
“The two eyes on the side are onyx. One of King – one of my father's crowns. The ruby is the only remaining jewel from Widow's...from the previous hilt. I worked the raven and wolf in black steel, and then silvered the wolf. I left the gilt lions on the crossbar, but now they're offering sapphires instead of rubies.”

“Where'd you get the sapphires?”

Gendry shrugs.

“From Tyrion,” Podrick answers. “He said the helmet we pilfered them off belonged to the Price of Dragonflies before it was Rhaegar's.”

Podrick's eyes sparkle and dance as if it's a secret joke and Meera wants to know it. She sidles up alongside him as Gendry continues to point out the details to Arya. 

“Where did Tyrion get the helmet?” she asks softly. Podrick has done this – offered his blade over to Gendry's forge to be reworked for King Bran, given Arya and Gendry this moment together, and she thinks she might love him for it. 

His eyes crinkle at the corners. “Bronn fetched it from a loose board in the Lord Commander's privy when he was...ah...righting the room for the its new occupant.”

Or perhaps she just might love him, for this and everything else he is, because it occurs to her that the stupid look on her face probably rivals the one on Arya's. But now Arya and Gendry are kissing, and that's a bit too much. “We should give them some privacy, Podrick.”

“No, you can't take Pod! He has to sing for us!” Arya shoves Gendry over with her shoulder, but sits close enough their arms are still entwined. 

“Oh, I…,” he debates, looks lost for a moment, looks to Meera. She nods. “Jenny's Song?”

There are rumors he sang it at the fire during the Long Night, for the Lannisters and Ser Davos and the King Beyond the Wall, when Ser Brienne was knighted by all the kingdoms on the eve of the last battle. Ser Davos has confirmed those rumors in Meera's own hearing, teasing him about being both kingsguard and the singer at the coronation. 

She's always understood why the prince stole Lyanna Stark, why she was a bride and a mystery knight worth stealing. But she's never much understood why Lyanna wanted to be stolen, wanted it so much that Meera's own mother traveled across the whole kingdom on horseback, pregnant, with Wylla Marshes and the Kingsguard in search of a phantom summer. The false spring, her father called it. Summer hadn't come, only death and grief. Greywater Watch was an island in a sea of chaos but Lyanna left so much wreckage in her wake. 

This is not a lavish banquet at a great tourney. They are the lords and ladies of the ashes, a small young remnant washed up at the base of the city in the wake of disaster. Podrick's short brown hair curls about his neck, but it's not silver and it doesn't fall in waves. He has no golden harp to pluck to accompany his melody. But his voice is sweet and pure and the song is the most beautiful thing she's ever heard. 

When it ends, Arya and Meera are both crying. They all look at each other, at the sword lying on the silk at their feet. 

Podrick bends down, runs his finger not over the wolf or the raven or the blade itself, but over a lion's paw. 

He picks it up in his right hand, sliding his left under the blade as he lifts. He goes down on one knee, nods at Arya. She doesn't understand. “Stand up.”

Arya lets go of Gendry's hand, gets to her feet, and now her tears are falling faster. 

“I thought to have the hilt redone to spare my lady Ser from her memories...had thought to wield it, perhaps. And perhaps I yet shall, but...Jaime left it with me, but it's not my sword to give. It was your father's sword, my lady. You should be the one to present it to your brother.”

Her hand closes around the hilt. “Thank you, Podrick.”

Gendry gets up, standing slightly behind her, the wall at her back. She waves the sword through the air, cutting once and then again, sparring with ghosts. She laughs, tucks the blade against her body, and kisses Gendry merrily.    
  
“Alright. I can be your forest lass. You can come.”

Meera rises to leave, finds that she is somehow holding Pod's hand and drags him along stumbling behind her. She can feel his reluctance to leave the sword – will it return to him indeed? - and then his resolve as he follows her, dropping her hand the moment they duck through the flaps. 

“Oh Podrick,” she says in dismay, when they've escaped into the sunlight and she feels the warm rays drying the tears on her face. “Your sword.”  
  
“It's alright,” he replies, “It's their father's blade. It was meant to be this way.”

“Did you have a name for it?” she is walking, walking...away from the tents, leading him as she did when they first came to the city. Away.

“When I thought of it, I did. Summer. For his wolf, and for…hope.”

“You're a good man,” she says, scrambling over the rocks, careful not look over her shoulder at him while she says it. “A true knight.”  
  
“Meera, I -” he sounds out of breath, but she is still hefting herself up boulders and sliding down them to get the precipice. “Thank you.”

And then she is there, on the point of the rocky cliff overlooking the city, and there is no where else to run. She is cornered.  _I want to be caught_ , she realizes. 

“You can have mine,” she stutters, the words tumbling out her mouth. “Dark Sister, I don't even know what to do with a sword. I have a fork and a dagger and bow...”

“Meera.” He has caught up with her. His hand reaches out and touches her cheek, but he cups it in his palm and leaves it there. Asking, not demanding, not grasping. 

“I can protect Bran well enough without a blade...”

He's rubbing her neck with his thumb and it feels strange and wonderful and she flushes from head to foot. “I don't want your sword, I want - “

But he doesn't say it. Maybe can't. She turns her head and finds his big brown eyes, and there's a trace of terror behind the heat in them. She tries not to beg, tries not to lean toward his touch. She doesn't want the moment lost. “What do you want?”

It comes out as a gruff whisper. 

“What Gendry has.”

She can't help herself. She sees him then, sees the weight and shape of his reluctance, brings her own hand up over his where it rests on her cheek. “Arya?”   
  
“No!”

He tries to draw his hand away. She holds it fast, laughing. 

“A forest lass, then?”

“You.”

He tastes like honey and cinnamon and like old leather, warm and sweet and wonderful. It's her that's kissed him, she thinks, but after a moment it's him kissing her and she melts against his armor and wishes he was wearing less of it. 

Love was her parents. It was out on the road with her brother. It was wrapping her arms around Bran in the cold. It was Hodor and Summer. She knows love. 

But now she knows what it's like to be young and in love, wrapped in someone's arms and kissed and it's different...it's so very glorious. 

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

It's another person who bids Sansa and Arya and Gendry farewell at the docks wearing Gendry's newly made Ravensguard armor. Lord Royce promises to watch over Sansa gruffly, and when Brienne thanks him courteously he mutters that his son died so that she could protect the king, and she knows he means it well but they've never once talked of Robar in all the time they've spent together, and the lump in her throat grows larger. If he knows of it, it's because Catelyn told him. 

Winter was coming, she'd told Brienne, but the big girl in the rainbow cloak had sneered. “Winter has no use for the likes of us...it is always summer in the songs.”

Cat looked at her with pity, then, and Brienne could see it. A winter's worth of grief. In her eyes, in the set of her jaw. 

Winter came and went, and it took Catelyn and Renly and all the Rainbow Guard but her. The knights of summer. 

It took Jaime. But winter didn't take him, did it? He rode into a dragon's mouth after the Long Night ended, when peace was close enough to dream, and somehow that hurts all the more. 

She bids farewell to Sansa and Arya on the docks, holds both of them in her arms for a long time. Spring is settling over the city. The winter blaze spared the bulbs; daffodils peek through the blowing ash. She's seen a bee or two out near the camp's stables when she was grooming her horse. The sun warms them even through the pain of their partings. 

She reminds herself of everyone who still miraculously lives. Catelyn's daughters. Her son, the king. Her ward, the deposed Targaryen King in the North. 

She doesn't break. 

It's another person who pushes the king's weirwood throne into the city. They come not as conquerors but as beggars for peace. The king in his throne, Podrick flanking her right side, Meera at her left, Tyrion and Ser Davos and Ser Bronn and Ser Rolland and Maester Tarly and Lord Reed following behind...and the lump is still there. It swells with the cheers of the people, who in another life would have looked at the crippled boy and the giant woman and the small dwarf and yelled freaks! but who instead shower them with blessings and prayers as they pass by.    
  
_They're cheering food, not heroes_ , she reminds herself. 

And she doesn't break. 

It's another person who kneels before the stairs that once led to the throne room but which are now curtained with a stone wall and a pair of roughly hewn and temporary wooden doors. Bran is here to administer, not hold court. They offer simple prayers for peace in the rebuilt halls of the remains of the Red Keep. They break bread and salt in silence, pass it around with a skin of wine. 

“I wish to visit the Godswood,” the king says, but then forestalls her. “We all have duties to see to. Podrick and Meera can accompany me.”  
  
But she has eyes, this other person who does not break. She sees Reed and the Maester go with them. The lump is large enough to choke her now; she can't speak for it. But she can nod, so she does that instead.

It's another person who climbs the steps to the tower, takes in the shields and swords that line the walls. She pulls out the great chair; it isn't dusty, but the leather is worn. She knows they put the keep back together like a jigsaw puzzle from a thousand jagged pieces. Two of the table's legs are freshly hewn wood, several of the shields cracked or singed. 

But whoever put this back together had been there before, knew it intimately. It is almost just as she remembers it, and she's remembered it often.

It looks as it did when Oathkeeper lay beside the book on the table, and Jaime was the man in this chair, and she was just a lost girl with a sword and a horse and head full of silly songs about summer knights. 

She doesn't break. 

When she peels back the heavy cover, it falls open to Ser Duncan the Tall's entry.  _Someone read this page a thousand times_ , she thinks. Maybe several someones. But there aren't so very many Lord Commanders between Dunk's tenure and hers. The White Bull. Ser Barristan Selmy. Jaime. 

_Jaime, Jaime, Jaime._

She jumps forward forty pages or so, finds only empty parchment, and starts making her way back. It's then she realizes Jaime's portion is close to the end of the written entries. Only Loras comes after him, and there are pages that have been cut out with a sharp knife and sewn back in. 

The Mountain that Rode was all but illiterate to begin with; she doubts he ever entered the room. Cersei would have ripped and scratched with her hands and left jagged tears instead of careful reconstructions. She doesn't think Bronn would have the nerve or motive to cook this up himself, though it might be his actual handiwork. So it must've been Jaime. Removing the brothers who weren't, the ones who soiled the cloak in the guard of false kings. And yet he's left himself only a page and half for his deeds, so she'll have to be concise. It's slow going. She writes and blots and thinks, writes and blots and thinks again. 

It's easy to talk about his oath to guard Catelyn's daughters, easy to outline his attempts to make peace at Riverrun and Highgarden and on the Goldroad. It's harder to address his time in Winterfell. 

As she writes, she thinks that her own entry in her own hand will be her first mention in these pages. She leaves out her defense of him, her love for him, their sham of a marriage cooked up in the aftermath of what really amounted to shacking up under a fur for a month. 

She doesn't have Jaime; she has his chair and his pen and his white book. Several times she questions what she's written, wishes she could rephrase it, but if she slows down she won't be able to finish so she presses forward, deliberately. She gets as far as his return to the city.  _He was attempting to save the capital from destruction. He was trying to ring the bells, Tyrion said._ She's not sure that's the truth, but it may be as much truth as she's willing to write in a book which will surely outlive her by centuries. 

Still, she isn't sure how to end it. 

Not with:  _they found him in the caverns underneath the keep, crushed beyond recognition_ . 

Not with:  _they found him with his sister, and every horrible rumor was truer than not_ . 

Not with:  _they hung him like a traitor from the gates_ .

Not her Jaime. None of that is how she wants anyone to remember him. 

She remembers him, coming fast at her with a sword in the summer sunlight, bursting with defiance and laughter. She remembers him throwing sand at a bear with his one good hand, throwing himself in front of her and laughing in the pit that was meant to be her death. She remembers him moving in her, above her, all over her, in her great Winterfell bed. The salt tang of his skin on her tongue, the way he panted her name, half cry and half groan, as he begged for her to break apart in his embrace. 

But those are not the ways she wants anyone to remember him either. Jaime, her lover. Jaime, her friend.  _There are no men like me. Only me. Only me._

The ink is dry. She mindlessly flips forward to Loras's entry, skims it, hopes to be struck by inspiration.

_'Of Highgarden. Brother to King Joffrey Baratheon's queen consort, Margaery of Highgarden. Sworn to Lord Renly Baratheon's Rainbow Guard to defend the Stormlands against the claims of Renly's brother, the Baratheon pretender Stannis. Commanded his sworn sister, Brienne the Maid of Tarth, until Lord Renly's death. Sent his sworn sister with Lady Catelyn Stark to free the Lord Commander from the dungeons of Riverrun. Delivered the strength of the Stormlands and the Reach to help defend the city against the Baratheon Pretender's forces at the Battle of Blackwater. Raised to the Kingsguard by Ser Jaime Lannister on his return from captivity._

_Died protecting the faith.'_

She picks out the parts she knows to be lies. Renly had been pretending too, not defending Storm's End. Loras had wanted to kill her for fleeing with Catelyn, for not preventing the tragedy in the first place. Jaime hadn't raised him, just accepted him. 

_It's always summer in the songs,_ she thinks. 

She holds it together enough to flip back, dip her pen in the ink, and close Jaime's entry.    
  
' _Died protecting his queen.'_

Rhaella's daughter. Cersei. Sansa. Choose a queen; choose any one of them and be correct. History could read of that what that would, interpret it however they needed to. She wants to think that underneath all his blustering self-hatred, he died trying to protect all of them from themselves and each other. 

Brienne tosses sand on the ink, too much,  _it's a book not a bear_ , and pauses a moment to let it dry before wiping the loose grains off the leather. She closes the book, leans back in the great leather chair.

And now, at last, she can break. So she does. And as she lays her forehead on her arms and drips snot and tears on the thick wood of the table, she thinks it's a sorry way to make a beginning. Crying over endings, grieving over what's lost. It's not a way to go on as Lord Commander. 

But right now it feels like someone else is Lord Commander, someone less emotional and more competent, someone not half-mad with the loss of her predecessor. Right now, she is just Brienne... missing Jaime. 

She doesn't mean to go on this way. But just now...the dam breaks. And there's nothing she can do to staunch the flow of her tears or the gaping hole in her heart where she used to hide all her dreams of him, even the ones she never dared to speak aloud. 


	11. A Fast Friend

He raps on the door twice and then waits. Still no answer. 

He learned from Stannis to never enter unless invited. He supposes he can wait, but the water will grow cold and then it won't be good for steeping tea. 

“Ser Brienne? I have tea for you. Shall I leave it out here?”

Tyrion sent him up here. Told him to check on her. But the tea was his own idea. He tries again. “Ser?”

He sets the tray down at his feet. 

She doesn't answer, but there is a shuffling, steps, and then she flings the door open. 

She looks terrible. Her eyes and her nose are both an alarming shade of red, and there's wet patch on her sleeve. Her hair is in disarray. 

Devan knows she's been crying. The signs are all over her. And of everything he expected, it wasn't this. 

“Tea sounds lovely.”

He thinks she means to pretend that nothing's wrong, but he likes Ser Brienne and he loves her Lord father, and he wedges his foot in the door so she won't close it. “What can I do to help, Ser? I can get you dinner...bring it up here. Or...there must be some task.”

She blinks quickly. “I'm sorry, I was so used to Podrick...well, things are different now. Here. I have just...been updating the White Book. Settling in. I think...”

She clears her throat, continues with more vigor. “You could tell Lord Tyrion I will leave the room and chambers as they are. They're…sufficient. And then have the contents of my tent delivered. When that is done, seek out Ser Rolland and train with him. A squire is not a servant, they are a knight in training, and when I have no time for the yard he will serve.”

“I will, Ser.”

She nods. He nods in return, lifts the tray and hands it to her. The water is still warm; he can see the steam rising around the edges of the pot. She takes the tray from him, sees the sausage and cheese he's cut for her.   
  
“Thank you,” she says more softly. Wistfully. 

“You're welcome.”

As she's closing the door, he spies the White Book on the great table, her sword unsheathed next to it, and an amber paperweight in the shape of a lion beside the hilt, and understanding twists his gut. 

He trudges down the steps with the weight of this knowledge settling over his shoulders, resolving to find Lord Tyrion and deliver her message. 

And ask some questions of his own. 

He finds him, appropriately enough, on the stairs to the meeting chamber at the base of what was once the Tower of the Hand. His father is sitting on the stair below him, turned to face Lord Tyrion. Ser Bronn is leaning against a pillar, his hand on his sword even in his leisure. They're laughing at something, and their laughter makes Devan angry. Angry enough to interrupt them.

“I took tea up to Ser Brienne, Lord Hand. She asked me to tell you that the rooms are sufficient.”

Their mirth dies quickly, and it does a little to soothe his anger. 

“Sufficient, eh?” Bronn smirks, but his eyes are a little wet. “High praise from our Brienne.”

That does it. Devan puts his hands on his hips and juts his chin out. “I know what you've all done.  _I know_ .”

They don't answer, just share a long look between them. 

He won't tell them she's been crying. He won't tell them he thinks it's because she's grieving. He's her squire, and he's supposed to keep her secrets. But he's her squire…  
  
“I'm not supposed to keep secrets  _from_ her. I'm her  _squire_ .”

“Sit, my boy,” his father finally says, patting a place on the stone step. “And quiet your voice. Someone is always listening.”

Devan does, reluctantly, folding his legs up under him. Tyrion lays his hand on Devan's shoulder, squeezes it. “Have you ever heard of Ser Jonathor Darry of the Kingsguard?”

“The one who died with Prince Rhaegar at the Trident?” Devan shrugs. He doesn't want stories of the Kingsguard, he wants to know why they're lying to Brienne. 

“Did he? I met a brother of the faith some years ago, in the Riverlands, at the Quiet Isle. The Elder Brother, they called him. I knew him for a Darry in an instant, though it was only later, piecing together snippets of what the brothers said, that I realized _which one_. I don't know if he chose that life because it was the only one that didn't violate his vows, or if it was forced on him, but I know he was content. Useful. Sometimes a man can do nothing wrong – can follow his orders, can fight his battles, can rage against the night – and yet find there's no place left for who and what he is once the war is over.”

“Then you make a place for him!”

“Didn't we?” His father interjects. “Tarth has more comforts than the Quiet Isle.”

“But why lie to her? Is Lord Selwyn lying to her too?”

“Because she's a worse liar than I am,” his father answers. And Lord Tyrion, over him, “Because we need her _here_.” And Bronn, from his pillar, “His grace said to be patient.”

Devan doesn't like it. The excuses are all different. He screws his face up, turns to Bronn, the one who's conveniently shifted blame to the king. 

“But you'll tell her, right? Eventually.”

They don't answer. Perhaps they think the answer will enrage him more, or perhaps they can't because they don't have one. 

The hand of the king speaks carefully. “I'm not sure how you came by your knowledge, or what you think you know. But I have a suspicion you may have heard it from a dead lion's mouth. Words are wind; a man hardly knows what he babbles when he's wounded and near dying; if you cannot serve Ser Brienne with a clean conscience, perhaps you should squire for Ser Podrick instead.”

He shakes his head. He and Podrick were squires together; he likes to think, despite the difference in age, that they are friends...and that would change things. He likes serving Brienne, likes that he feels he's repaying her father's kindness, likes that he can be close to his own father but have a role and position that has nothing to do with him. He wants to serve her. 

“It occurs to me that we failed to consider all of the ramifications of the reforms we are making. I'll find a woman to help attend to her domestic needs. Perhaps someone who can serve as a confidant. Will that ease your mind?”

It does. He nods. 

“Very good. Her rooms are in order; we are making progress. Now, anything else?”

Devan knows when he's being dismissed. He gets to his feet, brushes off the back of his tunic. “She asked me to fetch her tent. And then to find Ser Rolland and train with him.”

His father smiles up at him. “Good lad.”

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

They are betrothed in the Godswood on the very day they return to the Red Keep, with only the King and Lord Reed in attendance. It is less a celebration than an interrogation. 

They mean to stay in the Kingsguard, close to Bran, for as long as he will have them. But they wish to marry as well, raise sons and daughters for Moat Cailin and Tarth and the realm, even as they perform their duties. 

Podrick has no fear of not gaining His Grace's support; indeed, he promised them this when he raised them to their offices. But Lord Reed's support is a different matter. Meera is his daughter, and Podrick thinks he is only tenuously a knight, landed by love and pity but not birth. 

It is still hard to think of himself as one of the Kingsguard. The King promised there will eventually be seven, but he doesn't name anyone further, so for now it is just the three of them. They went to the edge of the abyss and back with him when he was just Lord Brandon of House Stark; their loyalty is unquestionable. 

Sometimes, if he's honest, it's still hard to think of Brandon as the King. In company, even each other's, all of them try to refer to each other by the courtesies they've been granted, but all of them slip up constantly. It's a source of amusement more than chagrin. They are learning by doing. 

Lord Reed tests him sorely with his questions, but in the end he gives in with a merry laugh, clapping Podrick on the back as he guffaws. 

“You'll do to give me grandchildren,” he says, and all of them – Podrick and Meera and even Brandon – blush. 

It only seems to bring him more amusement. 

It's harder to tell Brienne. He leaves Meera with the King and her father, but his steps are slow as he makes his way up the stairs of the tower to the Lord Commander's rooms. 

Brienne likes Meera, enjoys her company, talks easily with her as they go about their duties; he doesn't think she objects to Meera as such. And she loves Podrick dearly, and wants him to be happy, so he knows she doesn't object to him finding someone who loves him. 

It's just that the timing is terrible. 

He has wholeheartedly supported the...well, he doesn't think it's fiction, but there might've been a _bit_ of forgery involved...perception that Jaime and Brienne married in Winterfell. It did indeed deliver them Tyrion, and for that Podrick will be forever grateful. 

And Podrick didn't see everything, but he saw enough. He saw it for years, long before they all reunited in the north. Love is love, and that's what it was. 

But Brienne deserved a proper southern wedding, deserved to be feasted and cloaked and toasted, and she was denied it. And now she's a widow, and Jaime is gone, and she has constant and endless reminders of him everywhere. It can't be easy; this news won't be easy. 

Pod knocks on the door to her office that was Jaime's before her, and the great wooden door echoes. 

“Come in,” she calls, so he does. 

There's a trace of puffiness in her eyes, but she's sitting at the table eating chunks of cheese and drinking tea, and she gives him a small, tight smile when she sees him. “Who is with the King?”

“Meera and Howland,” he explains, pulling out a chair next to her and sliding in. The White Book is on the table, Oathkeeper next to it. There's a little golden lion carved in stone, the tea things, a stack of books. One of the books is in her lap, and he thinks she might've been reading when he interrupted her. 

“Ser Meera and Lord Reed,” she chastises. Brienne is a stickler for courtesies, but this is no time for them. 

“About that, Lord Commander,” he begins, but then...this is not the business of the realm. “Brienne.”

She blinks quickly, notches her neck up and tightens her jaw, as if she's preparing for a blow.   
  
But then he finds he can't say what he came to, and he flails his arms about helplessly looking for the right words. She finally takes pity on him. 

“You and Lady Meera mean to wed,” she says. “It's obvious to anyone with eyes. I suppose you come to tell me His Grace and Lord Reed have assented. Did they send you to seek my permission as Lord Commander?”

“I came to seek your blessing,” he says earnestly. “You're all the family I have, Brienne. If you object...”

“I don't object, Podrick. If you want my blessing, you have it freely. And you have my permission as Lord Commander as well.”

The words are all that are proper and fitting, but her voice is a bit tinny and she rushes through them and there is no feeling behind them. He doesn't know what to say. He knows why she's discomfited by it, knows that she's sad. Words won't make it better. They sit in silence a long time, and she doesn't meet his eyes, just stares down at the book in her hands. 

“What are you reading?”

She tilts the spine so he can read it.  _'The Tales of Ser Galladon of Morne.'_ It's one they used to recite aloud as they sat at the fires on their journeys, reading by moonlight or as they took their breakfast. But the leather is a pale tan calfskin, and the title is gilded. It's not her well-worn blue and silver copy at all. 

She hands it over to Podrick, and he opens it he sees there's an inscription sealed to the inside cover with bright blue wax. 

_'Presented to Ser Jaime Lannister, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard._

_This is not the promised ransom of sapphires, but it is a token of my thanks for your raven, and for bearing my only daughter back to the city._

_I owe you a great debt, ser, personally. The realm and its politics lie beyond the scope of it. I do not speak as Evenfall, but you have made a fast friend of the lady's father._

_Lord Selwyn Tarth'_

He closes the book quickly, lest the tears brimming in his eyes escape and mar the ink. 

“Don't you dare cry, Pod,” she growls, snatching the book back. “I've drowned in tears, and the time for weeping is over. We have too much work to do to give in to grief.”

“Sorry,” he says, stuffing one of the sausages on her tray into his mouth and chewing slowly, attempting to swallow the lump in his throat with the meat. 

“If you promise not to cry, you may have some tea. And I'll let you read the White Book.”

He grins at her. This is as it should be, he thinks. This is not Brienne the Lord Commander and her right hand. This is Brienne his sister, his mother, chiding him like he's a boy of twelve, promising him treats for good behavior. 

What survives of us is love, he thinks, as he reads the White Book and she flips the pages of a tale she knows by heart. 

“His grace says I'll need a coat of arms...for the book, and for the wedding cloak. I was wondering...would it be in poor taste if I incorporate Ser Duncan's? I thought to use a weirwood instead of an elm, and have a raven in its branches...and keep the falling star, but on a background of blue and azure...greeting the dawn.”

“I love it,” she answers, sipping her tea. The smile that breaks over her features is a real one. 

That's the story all the songs are telling. It isn't the grief that echoes, but the love.


	12. Scouring the Shire

Each new day brings a new flurry of wings, a new basket of letters. He holds out for three weeks, growing more terse as morning after morning the scroll he's silently waiting for...hoping for...fails to appear. He throws himself into the lists, the armory, getting to know the men. In the evenings he returns to the solar for dinner sore and aching from the exertion of walking and talking and watching, but it isn't the pain that sours his mood. 

Day after day, raven after raven, she writes her father. Selwyn reads the letters and passes most of them to him, so he's had it all, the brokering of a new kingdom from the ruins, and by her hand. 

She begs to send Tarth's fleet on an errand to Essos, to deliver the remaining Dothraki to the continent. Their horse lord Arya has bid them East, has told them she means to sail west and meet them where they both collide. Selwyn notes that it's a deft bit of politicking and that it's a pity to lose Lady Arya when she so clearly has a knack for giving her soldiers what they need. Jaime, who has met the wild wolf and doesn't she think she could ever be chained long enough for that, doesn't disagree aloud. 

She writes to tell them how Bronn was raised to Highgarden at Tyrion's request, how she'd ganged up on them both with Tarly and Davos until Bronn had marched her down to the brothels to meet all the prostitutes and their weans who still didn't have running water or clean sewers or solid walls. ' _I was wrong,'_ she wrote. ' _Ships aren't more important than widows and orphans. So perhaps he'll be an able Master of Coin after all. He prepared my rooms for me, very kindly, and readied the tower. Still, I mean to make him argue his points to the whole of the council, for Ser Davos' sake.'_

He learns that when the northmen and the knights of the Vale and the great lords left, the small lords descended, ready to press their claims and charm their new king. His grace meets with each of them alone, with only his kingsguard in attendance. ' _Some of them leave glad, knowing that justice will prevail in his grace's summer realm. Some of them leave quiet, brimming with resentment, knowing that justice will prevail and no one knows their misdeeds better than the King. The latter whisper of sorcery, but whispers carry. We will deal with them as we must, and better than they deserve.'_

She tells her father that Podrick and Meera wed in the Godswood. Jaime doesn't know Meera, has never met her...but he knew her father, briefly. Remembers a curious lad, small enough to be a boy but with a man's set to his slight shoulders, flushing as he offered a cup of wine to Ashara Dayne the night they clasped the white cloak about Jaime's neck. He gathers Meera went beyond the wall with Brandon, with the king. She is a lord's daughter and their sworn sister. It's a brilliant match for Podrick, and Brienne described them as 'ostentatiously in love' so it's probably a joyful one. ' _I'm happy they're happy_ ,' Brienne wrote, but there was a strange lack of gladness in the tone of her words. 

_She sounds like Tyrion. I have ruined her on weddings_ , he thought when he read it,  _and soured her on any sort of happiness._ Perhaps that explains why there's never a letter for him, he thinks. 

Her next letter dispels the notion. It's tear-stained, the ink blotted so much it's barely legible in places. ' _Podrick gave his sword to Gendry for reworking some time ago, and Gendry gave it to Arya, who gave it to her brother. It has come full circle now; last night at the wedding feast His Grace gifted it to Pod. The pommel has a wolf and raven where the lion used to be, but Gendry kept the lion's claws. They hold sapphires from Rhaegar's helm, and the King and Ser Podrick have agreed to call the blade Summer._

_The prev(blot) pommel was rew(blot)d into a pendent, and Podrick and (blot) gifted it to me. It holds (blot) third sapphire from the Prince of (blot) helm. I am over(blot). I miss Ja(blot)ercly. The Lord Comm(blot) chamber's are so full of ghosts (blot)rief._

_(blot) growing fat and idle with all (blot) meetings. I long to come home, (blot) for a season.'_

Selwyn hands it over with a slight grimace. 

Jaime reads it, boiling with rage, biting his tongue to keep from lashing out. 

“Maester Yost cleared you to ride, did he not? I think it's time we visit the Godswood.”

The walls have ears, Selwyn is suggesting. Or at least Jaime hopes that's what he's suggesting, that they'll be free to talk when they get out beyond the gates of Evenfall, because he has much... _much_ ...to say. 

They leave the keep in silence. Selwyn only breaks it to ask for his horse, and for 'the grey palfrey for Ser Brynden.' Jaime's seen the horse before; it's the huge dappled warhorse Selwyn was working in the pen the day they whispered of the past. He has to use the groom to swing into the saddle; his bones are old, he's out of shape, his wounds are still tender. And his mount is enormous. 

The horse twitches and lunges but settles into an easy trot beside Selwyn's warmblood as they climb the hill. Every so often, she tugs the bit in Jaime's hands, tossing her head. It feels good, the salt wind on his face and the beast between his thighs, the sun beating down on them. 

“She's more destrier than palfrey, I think,” he mutters to Selwyn as she snorts and prances. 

“She's a lady's palfrey, bred for a daughter's sixteenth nameday. But a daughter who needed a large horse with a fierce spirit to carry her.”

Jaime doesn't know what to say. He doesn't know if he can say what he needs to. Not here. Not yet. 

“I gave her gold to buy a horse when she sailed for Renly. I told her she needed one that had already been tested in battle, but I lied. I feared her tender heart would betray her if she lost Jonquil on the field.”

“And now poor Jonquil carries a one-handed fool on her back instead of her lady.”

“You have two hands again.”

He looks down at his right glove, gripping the reins. Selwyn's smith worked him an arm and hand in iron and wood, one with a pulley and gears that wraps around his shoulder. He can open and close the fist by arching his shoulders, though he hasn't really learned how to use it yet with any grace. Still, he  **looks** like he has two hands in his gloves and tunic. 

He asked for a wooden hand and arm. And they gave him one, one that almost works, one that isn't useless and decorative. “I suppose I do.”

There are many things Selwyn gave him that he didn't ask for. Safe harbor. Healing. Employment. Friendship. 

But he wants, he needs – he means to demand – more. It's his Lannister greed, he thinks, that nothing less than everything he wants will ever be enough. His Lannister curse. 

The Godswood is a ten minute ride at a trot, well out of the city and at the base of a tall hill. A stream runs through it, fed by some high alpine basin. The weirwood at the center has never been cut down, and it's clearly been visited often. There are well trod paths and a little bench made of stone under the leaves. 

They dismount, but Selwyn ties up the reins instead of hobbling their steeds. The horses graze in a little clearing as Jaime and his host make their way to the bench. 

“There are tales that say the Weirwoods have more eyes and ears than castle walls, my Lord.” 

“Ah, but they do not tell what they hear or see. There are tales that say Bloodraven still lives in a cave in the north, listening from within the trees. Tales that say men with the green sight never die, and that is why so many trees were chopped down in the old days. Fear of having our secrets known drives men to do terrible things.”

“Then why keep them?” The anger that's been building up edges his voice, he can't help it. He sits next to Selwyn grudgingly. 

“Why indeed. I have asked myself that most of my life. Is it for the gods? But which gods? Tarth is a strange place, it has a way of absorbing everything and everyone who tries to conquer it. We herd sheep and we fish and we grow oats and cattle in the valleys; we're simple people. In the age of heroes, it's said that Morne was a great city with a great marble quarry. But it brought the island nothing but grief. It gave its farms over to mines, and lost its sons to shipwrecks as they hauled the giant blocks over the sea. And then the Andals came, my forebears, but instead of finding a great city upon which to build a mighty empire they found the quarries filled, the stone city a crumbling ruin. They built Evenfall of timber and scavenged stones. They brought their seven gods, their septs and maesters, their songs of knights and ladies, and Tarth embraced them. But we did not abandon our woods or our fields or our clam middens. We did not abandon the old gods for the new. We were too remote for anyone outside to call our dual faith a heresy.”

“The dragons came, and we bent the knee and sent them their taxes and sometimes ventured out to their tourneys. We never distinguished ourselves enough to cause jealousy, and they left us alone for the most part, until...we do our duty to the realm, as best we can, but who can tell what secrets to hold and which to tell? I cannot foretell the future, and I have often been overcome with doubt. And yet...I hold my tongue. Yours is not the only secret I keep, son.”

He thinks he sounds plaintive and childish when he finally speaks. “But can't  _anyone_ tell her I still live?”

Selwyn has the gall to laugh at him. “Who lives? Her golden lion? I think not; his days are done. He died for his brother's sake, and was made carrion for the crows to buy peace.”

Jaime is silent for a long time. “I am still here,” he finally whispers. He hates that he sounds like a petulant child. Why is there no middle ground beyond his former self and this pathetic wretch of a hedge knight?

“Indeed you are, Ser Brynden. Serving Tarth; it is not a grand place, but it is a good one, and it needs a wise and just ruler. I am not an old man, but the years I've lived weigh heavy on me. I was burdened even as a young man with great cares beyond my ken, with only my wife to ease them. I loved her dearly; she was impossible not to love. So like her daughter, though not quite as tall, with hair the color of honey and eyes of violet blue. She danced everywhere she went, and sang songs, and we rode and sailed and dreamed. But she cost me my only brother, and then she died...and I lost our twins not long after. Our son...from my brother leaving to my son dying was but two years; in two years, Brienne and I lost everyone. It was no better on the mainland, Storm's End was besieged and the Prince lost at the Trident. Perhaps I have a decade left. Two if I'm very fortunate. My daughter has duties beyond our shores, and my niece and her husband have left as well. Tarth has need of you, just as you are.”

“I love her,” he says miserably. 

“Then take up her burden here, and bear it, as Ser Brynden Stone. As our master at arms, as our future castellan. Secrets keep. They'll wait to be told.”

He's never been very good at being patient. “I'm trying.”

“Even the gods cannot ask more of you than that. The King's Hand wrote you, I believe. What did _he_ say?”

“To tarry for a season.”

“He wrote me as well, to thank me for my kindness to his friend Ser Brynden. To tell me that he will ensure my daughter comes to visit, if I will only _tarry for a season_. So it seems we were given the same charge, to learn patience, and who can argue with the hand of the king?”

“I've been arguing with Tyrion for most of my life, and _all_ of his. I don't mean to stop now,” he quips, but his humor is halfhearted. “She's going to be angry.”

Selwyn smiles at that, his eyes crinkling up at the corners. “Furious. That vein in her forehead will pulse delightfully, and she'll snarl and snap. She's always been a feisty lass. Did she ever tell you what brought on my...willingness...to have her train with Ser Goodwin?”

“No.”

Selwyn laughs. “Well then, settle in. She was...thirteen?...perhaps. I'd stopped her from wrestling with the pages not long before, after she'd done accidental damage, and she promised to refrain from brawls. Trying so hard to be a proper little lady, but still full of wildness, always in the stables or running her hands over the shields in the Armory. She was coming in from a ride, going round the east fence of the paddocks by the kitchens when she stumbled onto an assault in progress. One of the young knights forcing himself on one of the kitchen girls, a girl about Brienne's own age but three hands shorter. The girl's cries had already brought one of the cooks to the door, and sent a squire running for the guards; it was not going to go very much further than it already had. The girl was bruised from fighting back, and her bodice was ripped, but she hadn't been despoiled. 

But my daughter saw nothing but him slapping the girl, heard nothing but her cries. She snapped a crossbeam off a gate and beat him bloody, and when he fell she kept kicking him and beating him with the board. Everyone who saw it said she was screaming that he was no true knight, and when the guards finally pulled Brienne off the young man she'd broken his collarbone, crushed his left hand, and shattered his right leg. He was sobbing 'I yield' over and over through the whole fight.

For a time, we wondered if he would die...but he survived. He accepted justice, turned in his cloak and charge. But instead of turning him over to the Watch for his crimes, I had to pay him off for his injuries – she'd done lasting damage to him. As I counted the coins into his broken hand, I realized she was a danger to herself and others. She didn't know how to channel her strength, or how to stop when a man yields. I could not rid the world, even this small corner of it, of every knave...and as long as there were false knights in the world I could not keep her from fighting them.”

Despite his anger, despite his frustration and greed and his regret for her pain, Jaime laughs. “I have one for you. Did anyone tell you how she came by her Rainbow Cloak?”   
  
“By winning a melee. There were rumors she'd tackled Loras Tyrell off his horse and bludgeoned him with her fist.”

“You heard right; Brienne tells it different, but I had it from Loras himself. _Flung herself at him screaming like an angry fishwife and beat him bloody with a knife to his throat_ were his exact words. She'd already left for the Riverlands when he told me, else I would've kissed her then and there.”

“What, and soiled that white cloak of yours?” 

Selwyn means it in jest, but it finds a soft mark and lodges there. 

Jaime Lannister loved her, but he used her poorly, furtively, covered over in shame. The cloak was soiled long before, by broken oaths and shit for honor, but his reluctance to put aside his sister...that was a sin indeed.  _I'm not that man anymore_ , he told his grace the king...the boy he pushed from a window, the boy who knew his darkest crimes and forgave them. 

He meant it. He wasn't, on the inside. He was someone else. 

Jaime Lannister was dead. Jaime Lannister  _needed_ to be dead; the peace of the realm was built on his corpse. 

“I guess I will have to get used to being Ser Brynden Stone. I fear it's a permanent state.”

“If it's any comfort, I think she means to make much and long of the time given over to mourning. And when she is ready to set that aside, I will give Ser Brynden leave to court my daughter.”

“A safe offer when she's two days away by fickle seas.”

“A generous one, when I know she means to make the journey despite its dangers.”

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

Podrick wonders what they will do when the exhaustion wears off the people, when the inevitable uprisings have to be put down. Three months into the reign of King Bran, a minor lord, claiming to be a Darklyn of Duskendale, comes early one morning to petition for some of the lands around Harrenhal. The King grants him an audience, asks him a series of increasingly uncomfortable questions about his conduct during the wars of the five kings. The man turns white and then red and storms from the room, sputtering. 

“Podrick,” Brienne says lowly, “Go tell Ser Rolland to escort him from the city before he returns his arms. Quietly, if you can.”

“No.”

Brandon stares off into the distance for a moment, and then wheels himself to his desk, picking up a bundle of letters tied with a leather strap. 

“Ser Podrick, Ser Brienne. I have a packet of instructions for Hot Pie and the masons. Ride out to Harrenhal, please, and deliver them.”

“Your grace -” 

“With haste, Lord Commander. Ser Meera will guard me here.”

That stops Brienne from arguing. They have their horses saddled and ride out without saying a word on the subject. They're several leagues from the city before Brienne says, “This is nonsensical. We're  _ahead_ of him.”

“Hmmmm,” Podrick says, because she's right...it's an upside down strategy. But he's learned not to question the King, who always seems to know everything before anyone can tell him. A greenseer, some say, Garth the Greenhand come again. Blood of the First Men, others argue...another Bran the Builder. And a few call it sorcery. Lord Darklyn of claim will likely whisper it's the latter. 

The land is healing, he thinks, as they skirt the road and ride through the forest. People are out in the fields as they get close to the castle, farmers healthy and placid enough to wave at them as they canter past. 

One tenth of the realm's taxes have been assigned to renovate and run Harrenhal, not as the castle it was meant to be before the Conqueror but as the center of the realm, the open hearths at the edge of the God's Eye. The king has assigned a baker and innkeep to run the place, and Hot Pie takes his tenth and turns it into food stores and rooms for the smallfolk to sleep and sanctuary for anyone who needs one. Harrenhal is still a wreck, he thinks as he spots the melted, twisted towers...but it's becoming less of one each day. Smallfolk gather outside the gates, and the yard is busy as they ride in and dismount. The guard looks awestruck as he takes their horses. 

“You're Ser Brienne and Ser Podrick. Of the Kingsguard.”

Brienne nods. “You know of us?”

He laughs and bows to them. “Every other song sings of one or both of you. We're to take weapons, but that don't apply to you.”

He hears whispers from the small folk as they pass through the crowds. Tarth and Lannister and Stark and Payne, the War for Dawn, Brienne the Beauty. Someone whistles the Bear and the Maiden Fair. Another hums the tune to Jenny's Song. They're gathered at long trestle tables in the great hall of hearths, eating stew and breaking bread and drinking small ale. 

A little food and kindness. Who'd have known that was the key to turning back the curse of Harrenhal? Podrick isn't surprised. There are no stewards, just servers, sharing the King's bread and salt with his people. Brienne asks one to be led to Lord Hot Pie, her mouth turning up at the corner as she says it. 

The girl curtsies and leads them to a corner with a small staircase, leads them up a handful of steps, and then opens a wide wooden door. Hot Pie is seated behind a great desk, talking to a man in a mason's apron. His face lights up when he sees them, and he starts to rise. 

“Ser my lady! And Podrick! Welcome to Harrenhal -”

“Please, finish,” Brienne says, waving to the mason. “We'll wait.”

The kitchen tower was rebuilt only two stories high, with a fireproof stone and lead roof, and the mason details out the costs and timelines to replace the other towers. 

“I have some orders from the King -” Brienne interrupts, pulling the packet of letters from her belt, but before she can step forward the wooden door flies open and a man stumbles in, panting and winded. 

It's the Darklyn that left the city on their heels. Podrick feels a chill down his spine, sees the man rush forward, reaching for his belt, hears him say he has an urgent message from the king's council. Brienne is behind the door, but he doesn't even look for her. He sees steel instead of a letter, and he's drawn Summer and leaning into his swing before he can even process the situation. The pretender's head thuds to the floor, his knife clattering and spinning over the stones. 

“Oh,” he hears Brienne say behind him. The serving girl in the doorway gasps and retches. The mason blinks dully, and Hot Pie's mouth is hanging in a little o. 

Blood is pooling on the floor under the body. 

“I...uh...sorry for the mess,” he mutters, leaning down to wipe his blade off on the dead man's cloak before resheathing it. 

So that is how peace is to be protected. By riding out ahead of whatever haunts them, and dispatching it before it can act. 

_That's how Bloodraven worked,_ he thinks. Cutting the heads off the hydra before it could strike. 

They leave quickly, down the back stairs, after handing over their letters. If they weren't both spattered in blood, they might tarry and talk to the smallfolk in the hall...but they're smeared with rust, and there's no sense in frightening people who are only trying to have a hot meal in a warm place. 

The guard looks gobsmacked as he hands their horses back over to them. 

“Someone made an attempt on Lord Hot Pie's life,” Brienne says uncomfortably, tucking her cloak so that the worst of the spattering doesn't show. “He will not make a second.”

They gallop out of the gates, and they are halfway to the city before Brienne reins her horse up, and then trots up to him. She snorts in either amusement or dismay, he can't tell. 

“We rode to the castle, you beheaded a man, and we rode back out. And now we'll have to go in to dinner to tell them all we delivered the letters, stopped an assassin, and made it back to the city before the second course is served. Perhaps we shouldn't try the horses so sorely.” 

Podrick doesn't laugh. He sees the humor well enough, but it was his blade that struck. They've hardly even sparred since Winterfell, let alone cut anyone down. She must see that on his face, because she continues gravely, “It was justice, Pod. Dispatching it quickly is a mercy to everyone involved.”

“I know.”

She clicks, and their horses settle into a slow trot neck to neck. She inspects the splotches on her cloak. “At least your Ser Meera will understand when she helps you undress. Wylla is going to be insufferable.”

He can't help but smile a little at that. “Wylla is harmless.”

Brienne narrows her eyes, shakes her head “A person can be void of guile and still be annoying. I did not need a lady's maid, and I most especially did not want a  _nursemaid_ .”

Podrick shrugs. “Have you asked Wylla why she was, as you aptly put it, a nursemaid? And whose?”

“No,” she answers readily. And then, more quietly, “Why? Should I?”

He holds her eyes for a long moment, nods. And then he shifts in his saddle, kicks his horse's flanks, and canters off before she can ask what he knows or how or why. They're Meera's secrets, not his own. And Wylla's, if she wants to tell them. 


	13. Long May You Roar

“Kingslayer.”

It's a strange dream, he thinks, tossing in the blankets. There's a wolf at the foot of his bed, grinning, its teeth dripping blood, whispering his secret name. 

Wake up, wake up, wake up, he tells himself. He hasn't had a nightmare in a month. 

It's no wonder he's having one now, even so.

He cries out, rising up on his left elbow, and throws the covers off. But the wolf at his feet doesn't disappear. It  _laughs_ .

In an instant, the wolf is a smiling young girl with her hair frizzing out around her head like a dark cloud. 

“Fuck,” he says, and she laughs again. 

“Oh, leave off. Bet I scared you good, but it doesn't look like you pissed yourself. Cover yourself back up before Gendry gets jealous and puts an axe through your head.”

He thought to drown himself in wine and darkness while Arya Stark slept down the hall with her consort the Lord of Storm's End. Taking their leave of Lord Selwyn, bidding him farewell on their journey back from Winterfell because you must go south to go west and Gendry hoped to borrow a forge for an afternoon. 

Ser Brynden made himself scarce. His greying hair and beard and his broken nose do much to relieve him of any fear of being recognized, but Arya would know him in an instant. So he's holed up in his rooms for the last twelve hours while Selwyn entertained them in the solar and put them up in Galladon's rooms. 

He jerks the blankets back, holding them up to his chest with his remaining arm. “Seven hells, Arya! What are you -”

“Just saying farewell. Giving you a small token of my affections.”

“ _Please_.” It might sound like begging, or uncomfortably close to it, but he really hopes she hasn't come to murder him _now_ , after everything.

“Relax, I'm not here to kill you. Just saying goodbye to my _good brother_.”

He might still be dreaming. “What? Does everyone know I'm here?”

“No. A little bird whispered in my ear. Sorry for breaking into your room, I couldn't help myself.”

“Right.” He shrugs. He didn't piss himself, but _just_. 

“Here,” she says, scooting across the bed and holding out her hand. He tucks the blankets around himself and then holds out his own hand. She drops a stone into his palm, and he feels the weight of it, rolling it in his fingers, but it's too dark to see it in the dim moonlight streaming through the window. 

“What is it?”

“Just a bauble. A little trick of light my Old Nan gave me. You need it more than I do.”

It feels warm in his palm. He doesn't think it's malicious. “Thank you.” 

“Stay dead. Words travel; if the Unsullied ever hear we lied to them, they might want to go investigate what's happening up North.”

“I plan to.”

“Good.” She bounces off the bed and heads for the service hallway off the privy chamber. “A looking glass will tell you all you need to know.”

He closes his hand around the stone, and he finds himself calling out to her. “Arya, is she...I made so many mistakes.”

He closes his eyes then, can't bear to look at her even in this murky light. 

“She'll be fine, Ser Brynden. Even grief gets better with time.”

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

Brienne aches from head to toe when they get back to the city, slide down from their horses. She reined up under the pretense of talking, but in truth she hurt from riding so hard after so long stuck behind a desk. The ruse hadn't worked; Podrick was impatient to be home with his bride, and set a demanding pace. His younger bones seemed to take the abuse, but Brienne wants a hot bath and some tea and crackers to settle her stomach. 

They've missed dinner, but they find the King and Meera and Ned Dayne, the royal cupbearer, in his chambers. Ned and Meera are playing cyvasse. It's hard to tell who's winning; Meera smiles when she sees them, and then pales at the blood on their cloaks, knocking the board as she rises with a little cry.    
  
“We're unharmed,” Podrick forestalls, “Merely tired and sore.”

Brienne lets Podrick brief Brandon, watches the King's face as he hears that they delivered the message and the King's justice. They stink of blood and sweat and horses; justice has a sour smell. 

The King doesn't smile, doesn't blink. He just looks thoughtful and a bit sad. “I hoped he would not be rash.”

The silence drags out.    
  
“Have Tyrion order baths and dinner to your chambers. Meera, tend to Podrick.”

That leaves zero Kingsguard with the King, and it is an unacceptable ratio. She nods to Podrick and Meera. “Go. I'll stay until you've bathed and eaten, and then perhaps we can sleep on watch shifts.”

“Ned here is perfectly capable of protecting me.” He turns to the young man who once served Beric Dondarrion. By these terms of peace, the Lord of Starfall is a Dornish hostage, but the King named him cupbearer before the young man could unpack his bags. The King trusts him, for reasons he doesn't make known. “Fetch your sword.” 

Brienne is too tired to argue, and she's questioning whether she ought to argue at all.  _He'll be our fourth_ , she thinks.  _I'll be asked to knight him Beric's memory, and perhaps his uncle's._

She bids Podrick and Meera goodnight on the stairs, then continues up to her chambers. She's not surprised to find Wylla already there and dinner laid out on the desk. Three young men are pouring buckets of steaming water into the bathing basin in her privy. 

The older woman takes her cloak as she comes through the door, unclasping it and hanging it on the peg. She clucks at the blood, but she doesn't draw back in horror or look askance at it. “You must be tired – I'll send that to be cleaned. Here – sit and eat while they're drawing your bath.”

“Thank you, Wylla,” Brienne says, waving to the chair next to her. “Please, break bread with me.”

Wylla raises her eyebrows, but then smiles. She's not beautiful, Ned Dayne's nursemaid; she's older, with graying mousy hair and muddy brown eyes, but she has charming dimpled laugh lines when she smiles and her eyes crinkle up at the corners. She's soft spoken,  _comforting_ . A child's maid. Brienne has courteously refused her assistance each night for nearly three months, occasionally accepting tea and allowing her to tend to laundry. Devan cleans and polishes her armor and runs errands by day, but Wylla haunts her nights. She's never once asked her questions about herself or asked her to sup, and Brienne feels a pang of guilt. She hasn't been unkind, but she's been deeply resentful of the implication that she needs this much looking after. 

Wylla accepts a cup of tea and a couple of biscuits. “Difficult day?”

“Podrick swung the blade. I was just in the way,” she says, taking a sip of the tea. It feels warm and wonderful on her throat. “But yes, it was long. I haven't ridden that hard since the journey from Winterfell.”

“Bloodshed makes every burden heavier and harder to bear.”

She thinks of her question on the road back from Harrenhal, of Podrick's pointed nod. “Wylla...how did you come to be here?”

Wylla considers for a moment. “Your cousin spied you from the balcony. To Harrenhal and back in a day is a hard ride.”

“No, not now. Here in King's Landing. It's a long way from Dorne. Podrick said I should ask you.”

“Ah. Podrick's a good lad. I wonder which part of it he meant.”

“Can you just – can you just tell me what you will of your story?” She's on her third biscuit, and now that her stomach is settling she finds she's ravenous. She chews a wedge of cheese while she waits, and then another, but Wylla doesn't speak. 

The nurse looks pointedly at the door to the privy where the boys are pouring the bath. “It's not a very interesting one, but it's long.”

So not in company, which makes Brienne burn with curiosity. Enough to make small talk and trade pleasantries about Harrenhal and the progress there as she eats. The bath is finally drawn, and the boys depart. 

Brienne takes a long swig of tea to wash down the food, and moves to unbuckle her gauntlets, but Wylla's hand waves her off. “Let me help. And in return, you'll get your tale.”

Brienne nods and lets her remove her gauntlets, and then her pauldrons, and finally the breastplate emblazoned with the raven, lifting it over her head. 

Brienne stands up, unbuckles Oathkeeper, unsheathes the blade and lays it next to the White Book, tucking the scabbard against her chair. Wylla continues to help her undress, but she also begins to speak. 

“My father was a fisherman, and Dorne was not my home. I had a large family, aunts and uncles and cousins. Most were fisherfolk, but a few were a bit more lofty. Once, when I was very small, we gathered at my uncle's home for a feast...and a singer came from the south, a small wrinkled woman with white hair and gnarled fingers but a lovely voice. She sang of knights and maidens and fierce battles and glorious tourneys and I was transported by her songs. I wanted to see beyond the marshes and swamps and inlets, see the sands of Dorne and the green fields of the Reach, the Red City by the Bay. Wanderlust, my family called it. Some years later, when my cousin meant to go south to a great tourney, he let me accompany him. There were four of us, my cousin and his brother and sister, who set out on the journey. It was to be a great adventure. We bought horses at the Twins - “

“Please, just give me a moment,” Brienne says, because she wants to hear the rest of it but she can remove her tunic and breeches herself, and is relieved that Wylla turns to face the wall while she slides into the bath. She's modest enough as is, but the idleness has made her a bit fat as well, and it only adds to her reluctance to be seen by eyes other than her own. “Go on, the Twins."

“Ah yes,” she says, turning back, sitting down on the stones next to bath and dipping a ewer in the water to pour over Brienne's sweat-matted hair. “I was sixteen summers, same as my cousin but older than both his siblings. We rode all the way to Harrenhal even though we were unpracticed with horses. We hunted and fished on our journey; we had gold, and weapons, and our finest clothes in our packs, but the further we went the more I realized how shabby even our best was compared to the parties we met on the road.”

“All the greatest lords and ladies were gathered there. My cousin didn't take us to the castle, but around the back of the Godswood. We made camp on the shore of the Isle of Faces. On the third morning, we woke up and my cousin was gone. He'd disappeared. We were alarmed...I set out through the Godswood, looking for him, and it was there a young wolf found me. He wanted to know who I was, and what I was doing...so I told him. I was nobody, but he told me I had a pretty smile and as my lord he'd protect me. He was tall and comely, dressed beautifully, and I was young and perhaps too sheltered. I fancied myself in love with him, told him I was his servant and would repay him kindly for his shield.”

Brienne is no longer a maiden; she understands the subtext. 

“He brought us into the castle, into their camp. A week later my cousin found us. He was bloodied and bruised...limping and leaning on the arm of the wolf's sister. He looked at me long and hard, and I knew I'd shamed him, but he forgave me easily enough when his own head was turned by a lass. Ashara was beautiful, as lovely as Lyanna though not so bold or fierce. Every man there fancied himself in love with one or the other or both of them, and while Lyanna protected my cousin Ashara threw herself into the task of extracting me from 'Brandon's odious attentions' with a fervor.”

Brienne gasps as she realizes what Wylla is saying, and her hand comes up and grasps the older woman's wrist. “You were there. You were there when Aerys raised him to the Kingsguard?”

There's something close to pity in the maid's eyes as she shakes her head. “Your gold lion? Alas, no. I was hiding out in Ashara's tent during the entire tourney and all of the feasts. But they all said the white cloak looked lovely with his gold hair, and marked that he looked sad when the King sent him away.”

“Thank you,” Brienne says, because it's _something_. 

Wylla clucks her tongue, runs her hand through Brienne's wet hair, reaches for a bar of soap. “Ashara was one of Princess Elia's ladies, and she left with her but came back shortly after the tourney. She said it was to help me, and it was, but she'd also somehow come to return my cousin's bashful affections and wanted more time with him. Lyanna's brother had dishonored me, and I think she felt responsible for it, so she stayed too and promised that, although he couldn't marry me, he would acknowledge what came of our affair as a Snow. And that's where the Prince found us, just as the last rays of the false spring were fading. We went south, and when the passes cleared enough for traveling, continued to Starfall. And there I stayed.”

“Mmmmm,” Brienne answers, leaning back into the woman's touch as Wylla massages her head, works the soap through her hair. The touch isn't sensual, but it's caring...and it feels so good to be cared for. To allow herself this small vulnerability. “That feels wonderful.”

“Are you growing your hair out?” Wylla asks, pulling a lock the side and measuring it with her hand. 

“What? Oh, not intentionally. But it's growing out a bit on its own, now that it's not breaking off inside my helmet. Why did you stay there? Even after Ashara died?”

Wylla sighs as she begins to rinse her hair. “We were very young, and twice as foolish. I had the wolf lord's bastard in my belly, which was dishonorable enough for a girl from nowhere, distant kin to a minor lordling. But my cousin married his lady in the Godswood, before the Old Gods, and the Prince and Lyanna followed. They were wedding north to south, old houses to old houses, in the hopes of forging some kind of peace. All three of us girls were with child, and happy, bearing our future over donkey paths, sleeping rough under the stars. But nothing went as planned. Brandon died first, never to acknowledge his child. My cousin left to find Ned Stark, but the North raised with Robert against the Prince, against  _us_ . Rhaegar left, and then we were three women in a tower in winter, great with child and shaking with fear. My babe was born, frail and early; Rhaegar died. Lyanna's came, hale and lusty, but she grew weak and sick.”

Brienne doesn't understand why Wylla is trusting her with this, but the woman's hands are soft and gentle and her voice is low and soothing as she picks through the tragedy of her life, rubbing Brienne's scalp as she talks. 

“Ashara was huge with child the day Ned came riding over the hill with his men. Lyanna insisted from her blankets that he was friend, but Ser Gerold named him foe for rising with Robert and killing the Prince by proxy. I nursed both babes at her bedside, mine and hers; she was too weak for nursing. But Ashara was determined to go down and keep the whole thing from turning bloody. She was too slow; Ser Gerold and Ser Oswell and all of Ned's companions but one lay slain on the steps by the time she made it to the door. Ned and Arthur faced each other, both with bloody swords drawn. My cousin stood behind Ned, trying to talk them out of further bloodshed...but Arthur provoked his honor, and Ned swung forward, just as my cousin saw his bride in the doorway and screamed at her. It was enough to shake the towers; we heard it upstairs. Arthur froze, they said, his sword suspended above his head, spinning to look at his sister. Ned couldn't stop; his sword sliced through Arthur's breastplate and kept going.”

“We hadn't meant any of it, the war or the waste...we were dumb with grief and horror at everything from the tourney to the tower. Lyanna didn't last the night, but she lasted long enough to charge Ned with her son. I think she blamed herself...I think perhaps the grief of it killed her. We meant to make for the sea, but my cousin wanted to take Ashara home with her brother's bones and his sword to have her child. So we went over the passes instead, and I thought Ashara and the babes wouldn't make it a hundred times. Somehow we did; our northmen were deft hands at winter travel, even with a pregnant lady and a nursing mother with twin babes and a train of bones. They tied sleds to the horses and pulled us over the passes. And Starfall...Starfall was sanctuary. My own child was weak and the maester said she wouldn't survive another journey. Ashara had her babe there, and resolved to go North, to take Lyanna's prince to Winterfell, to go home with her husband and her own daughter. I stayed; my lass failed to thrive, but the Daynes were kind to me, and I loved the great castle and the sea. When she died, they buried her in the family crypts, with honors no bastard ever saw – and I loved them for it. They gave me babies to suckle, children to raise. But when young Ned left again, to serve His Grace...I thought perhaps it was time I came north. The whole realm knows Lyanna's end, so I'm no longer a danger to others by the secrets I keep. And here I am.”

Brienne thinks perhaps she didn't hear all of that, or hear all of it correctly. She stretches back, shakes the water out of her hair. She studies Wylla, the open honest face, so void of guile or calculation, offering up the secrets that tore a kingdom to shreds as if they're smoke and mist. 

“Why would you tell me this?”

“Podrick knows,” Wylla says, “And you're his family. Ashara's lass, my cousin's daughter...Meera and Jon Snow are all that's left of us now...and you're kin to them both, in deed if not by blood. I have no fear of your knowing, or your telling.”

Brienne closes her eyes, breathes in the peppermint-scented steam rising off the water. So many secrets, so many lies. And for what?

_For a peace they all dreamed their children might one day see._

“And because you need a friend, lass. One who's known grief and loneliness and motherhood. The wisdom of crones, you only get that by living.” Wylla hands her a thick towel, smiling softly, lays her robe at the edge of the bath, turns to tidy up the soaps and scents and to give her privacy. 

Brienne twists the rest of the water from her hair and wraps the cloth tightly around her head, considering the words. “I've been lighting candles to the Crone,” she confesses, rising out of the tub and wrapping herself in the thick wool she brought down from the north, picking aimlessly at the sleeve. Sometimes she imagines it still bears Jaime's scent. “Podrick getting married...I'm not so very old, but I feel like a matron these days.”

Wylla puts the basket back on the shelf, and turns back with a puzzled look on her face. Her eyebrows furrow as she studies Brienne, and then she sighs. “Do you really not know?”

“Know what?”

“Let's sit,” Wylla says, and Brienne follows her out of the privy to the table where their cold tea and cheese and biscuits and peach tarts still wait for them. “Your courses haven't followed the moon since I've been here.”

Brienne flushes. It's not the first time someone has brought this up; it began when she was fourteen. Her voice sounds small even to her own ears as she admits, “They never do. Especially when I'm under great stress. My septa used to tell me that was why my body never took on a woman's shape.”

Wylla snorts and laughs. “Your septa sounds like a halfwit. You have a woman's shape well enough; the mother's.” 

“I'm not a...” she begins, but she looks at a crumble of cheese on her lap. She considers how fat she's growing behind a desk, how the laces on her breeches keep shortening by the day, but shakes her head. “I would have felt it.”

“Seven have mercy. I think you might be more innocent than I was.”

“He…” _Left. Died._ “I've been alone for five months. I would know.”

“Soon enough, you won't be able to hide it.” Wylla's hand is warm and strong as she clasps her shoulder. Lending her strength. Her head swims…

At first, she hadn't been thinking at all, and then Jaime had reminded her they should be careful, and from that point on, they had. She hadn't wanted Tansy or Moon Tea; let fate take its path. Her courses came with the full moon, two weeks before he left, and they'd both been a little bit sad even if neither of them voiced it. And afterwards…

And after. 

She's the halfwit.

She rests her hand on swell between her hips, thinks of what she's heard women say about the experience. Thinks about how frequently she was sick that first month in the city. Grief could do that, but so could a child. 

_Jaime's child_ . Jaime's bastard. But not a bastard, because Brandon already fixed that part. 

_Brandon._

“What will I tell the King?” she whispers. She's Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. It's bad enough she's a woman, and a widow. What is she going to do, stretch her breastplate over her swollen stomach until no one can deny the obvious and then whelp behind a curtain at a small council meeting? This is a disaster. 

“Tell him what he already knows. Don't think for a moment he doesn't. Frankly, we all thought you knew, or at least suspected.”

It's a beautiful disaster. There's nothing she needs less than a child right now. And nothing she's ever wanted more. 

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

Davos thinks it might be a kind of sorcery, the king's second sight, but it's like none he's ever seen. His grace speaks knowingly, but sparingly. He counsels little and interferes less, but he readily answers questions when asked directly. 

Marshaling troops, commenting on security, meting out the King's Justice...that falls to Brienne. Diplomacy and petty politics is Tyrion's domain. Samwell supplies the documentation they need. The economic and logistical reality of running a kingdom has fallen on...Bronn and himself. Two nobodies from Flea Bottom, with coarse speech and common manners and more work than they know what to do with. And it is a  _lot_ of work. A lot of meetings. A lot of arguing about budgets, though they find more similarities than differences in their priorities. 

His grace doesn't want grand palaces or sorties. He wants the great castles fixed and run by mostly competent and reasonably honorable lords, wherever they are found.

If power rests where men think it does, the Stark boy in his wheeled chair wields more of it than Stannis ever dreamed of. Davos doesn't have to go begging on docks and in groves; good men turn out to support the idea of peace, and they find a king who supports the idea of it as much as they do and cares little for micromanaging the details of what form it takes. The old institutions are not gone, but their staffs are broken. Cersei crippled the faith, Greyjoy the Citadel. They have no energy left to marshal their forces enough to rebel against the new order. Everyone who wanted to rise up did, and they were cut down where they stood by each other. 

Stannis called the lords who never sent their banners craven, but Davos doesn't see anything cowardly in putting your people before your pride. The men who survived might not be the boldest, but they're mostly the sort of solid, stable people you can build an infrastructure around. 

_It took the best and the worst, and it left the men like us._

Bronn makes no pretense of honor or higher ideals, but he also doesn't often throw away the king's gold and silver on frivolous things. He and Tyrion send the Lannister soldiers, what remain of them, home to prepare their own fields. The former castellan of Highgarden is located in Mistwood, where he's gone to ground to run their stables, and reinstated. “He knows the books better than anyone,” Bronn explains to them. He approves a monument to the old rose and the young ones in the gardens, Olenna and Margaery and Loras arranged around a single stone bud twenty feet high. “Get them used to the idea of big statues,” he quips to Tyrion. “So when I go they'll want one of me as big as the Titan of Bravos in the gardens, Lord Bronn of the Dawn.”

One by one the Lords of the Stormlands make their way to the city. The ones who knew him while he served Stannis greet him as an old friend, and the ones he doesn't know bow to the Onion Knight of myth and legend. 

Marya finally arrives; they spend a week his rooms, recounting the surreal events of the past several years. 

“Your words were so sparse from the North,” she tells him. “And we were looked down on by everyone, as smallfolk trying to act beyond our station. But then all at once, the songs reached the Stormlands. Your deeds at Storm's End, at Dragonstone, at Castle Black, at Winterfell, at King's Landing. The Onion Knight and his soup ladle and bread lines, feeding the soldiers on every side of every war. They respect you, from the youth pushing the pig carts to all the Lords of the ancient houses. Most of them kept their heads down, hoping to survive the five kings and the dragons and the beasts of winter – but you were always in the vanguard. They say you're blessed by the Seven, lord husband.”

She laughed when she said lord husband, because they are miles and light years from Davos the Flea Bottom delinquent and Marya the carpenter's daughter. The titles are ridiculous, but he sheds a few tears about what she claims they whisper behind his back. 

He didn't do anything for glory, and it wasn't glorious. He'd trade his life and future and seeing summer come again if the Stormlands could be led by his oldest son and Shireen, if they could have survived to see this. 

_It took the best, and left the men like us._

They do the best they can. His grace seems to think it's enough.    
  
They stop holding their collective breaths as the peace takes root and holds. 

He learns to laugh more; it's hard not to with Tyrion and Bronn bickering back and forth constantly while Brienne plays mother hen.

Davos doesn't want anything to rock the boat. They're sailing in calm waters, have found a sort of rhythm. 

Brienne is eating a pastry, sipping her tea, staring off into the distance. Samwell is preparing fourteen pages of notes on the history of the Arbor for a discussion about trade. Tyrion is telling Podrick some ribald joke, and the younger man is blushing in his pretty armor, when Meera wheels the king into the room. 

They all go to attention for the briefest of moments, just enough that Brienne won't chide them, and settle into their places. The maester is squirming in his seat, so the king nods to him. “Sam, you looked into the Arbor.”   
  
“Yes, and I discovered that, well, the 80's AC are a really interesting period in their history, let me see...” 

“When were they happiest with the crown's terms?”

Sam stops shuffling his parchments, looks up. “Aegon the Unlikely, I believe.”

“Give a list of his reforms to Tyrion. We'll reinstate them.”

“Good, yes.” Sam nods.

The king turns to Davos. “We have ships to deliver them?”

“One or two, your grace.”

“Very well.” His grace pauses, catches Tyrion's eye, nods. “I wish to go to the God's Eye for a time. I would like you all to begin working on plans for a harvest festival in October, at Harrenhal. We'll leave next week.”

Davos has rarely argued with any king, but he cuts in. “We can't wrap up business that quickly.”

“Ser Podrick and Ser Meera and I will leave next week. The council will remain in the city except to attend the feast, but Hot Pie can't be charged with all of the logistics. We'll need food and entertainment, and some of Ser Rolland's men to help keep the peace. And perhaps a tourney; a joust, I think. And contests for the small folk to show their skills.”

“And who's to be invited, your grace?”

There's a ghost of a smile on the young wolf's face. “Everyone who wants to travel to the castle of hearths at the God's Eye to break bread with their king. That is all I have for today; carry on.”

And that's when Davos turns and sees Brienne. Her head is bowed over her tea, and there's a little smile on her face, and her cheeks are pink. She gives the King a grateful adoring look as they stand up to hail him and call for his reign to be long and prosperous, and Meera and Podrick leave with him but Meera trails her hand over Brienne's shoulder as they go, a gesture of support. 

As they sit back down, Tyrion pulls a tray of wine jugs and goblets out from under the table. He sets the glasses down in front of each one of them in turn, ending with Brienne. She won't meet his eyes, but now her pink cheeks are red and there's a small battle of wills as she tries to turn the goblet upside down. “None for me, Tyrion.”

“A _sip_.” He swats her hand away, first lightly, and then harder. She folds it with her right one in her lap. 

“We're at _breakfast_.”

“If I thought you'd come down to dinner, I'd wait. But you won't, you'll hide up there and avoid me. So you'll drink now.” The Hand pours a little into her glass, and then makes his way around the table, pouring a few fingers of wine for each of them before sitting back down and filling his own cup to brimming. 

Davos has no idea why Tyrion wants them to drink at half past nine in the morning; the king leaving surely isn't  _good_ news. It might be a test, to leave them to their own devices for a few weeks and see what happens. It's not a good omen that they mean to be drunk by noon and his grace hasn't even left yet. 

“I can't believe Podrick told you,” Brienne says, finally mustering the courage to look up at the Hand, who is swirling his glass with a funny little smile. 

“Got it out of Wylla, actually. I was suspicious when his grace told me he was sending you on a little journey.”

Brienne narrows her eyes. “She wouldn't.”

“I had to cry. It wasn't pretty, I assure you, but the mother is moved to tears for even us monsters. A wee battle-scarred lion, alone in the world, is a pitiful thing. What could she do but soothe my cares?”

Even Brienne laughs at this, though she counters, “You are despicable.”

“Now, now, sweet sister, that's no way to speak of the boy's favorite uncle.”

“It's just as likely to be a girl.”

“We'll see,” Tyrion says merrily, and by now Davos and Samwell have caught on. Davos raises his glass, and Brienne flushes again. “To my nephew's health!”

Davos tips his goblet, takes a sip only slightly larger than the one Brienne manages. Samwell sips as well, but Tyrion and Bronn drink long and lusty from their cups. Bronn beats the table twice with his fist, shouts “To our Lady Tarth!” They drink again, everyone but Brienne. “To our children,” Sam toasts cheerfully. “To a peaceful world for the weans,” Davos says, when it comes to him. 

Brienne is the only one left. There are only a few drops left in her cup; she started with so little to begin with. 

She holds the cup with both hands, looks down across the long table at Tyrion, and her lips curl up in a soft smile. Her eyes are a bit misty as she nods at him. “To what's left of House Lannister – long may you roar.”

Tyrion blinks tears out of his eyes quickly and gulps the rest of his cup. Davos chokes down the rest of the wine, a chill settling over him. “Where're you going, Ser?”

He knows the answer before he asked, but he doesn't like it and hopes for a different one. “Tarth, Ser Davos. I'll return for the feast, if the gods are willing.”

Tarth. With what's left of House Lannister indeed. 

His lies are about to unravel. Perhaps that's what leads him to say, “I'm surprised you agreed to go.”

“I didn't. His grace...it was an order, Ser. But perhaps…perhaps I'm learning not to argue with my orders. Until I'm safely delivered, I hope you'll all keep this in confidence. I have faced armies, but I fear the childbed more.”

It's an uncharacteristically vulnerable statement from Brienne, who always endeavors so hard to keep herself contained. While she's clearly embarrassed, she's also more relaxed than he's ever seen her. Wearing her skin comfortably. 

They're all learning not to argue, he thinks. He wonders idly if she'll ever forgive any of them when she discovers the secret they've been keeping. 

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

By the end of two weeks, Brienne is desperate to escape the city, even if she's being forced to take a boy and a nurse as chaperones. It's more of the King's orders, but she's fairly certain it's Tyrion's fault. She's been avoiding Tyrion as much as possible since the news broke to the small council, but on the eve of her departure, the Imp stands outside her office and pounds on the great wooden doors. 

He's been pounding for what seems like hours, and there is nothing else she can possibly pack or tidy away or make lists about. She briefed Ser Rolland until he begged for relief, and it would be patronizing to lecture Pod again about his duties to his grace the king. 

Podrick and Meera are to be his left and right hands, Ned Dayne his steward. She is to  _go home_ . Brandon was insistent. 

And she's grateful. She doesn't want to be waddling around the city in her armor while everyone whispers about what they can plainly see. Even steel and cloaks can only hide so much, and now that she knows it's obvious. Her breasts haven't grown larger from  _use_ , as she supposed. Her thickened waist isn't – or isn't just – pastries and peace.

“I'm not leaving, and we're both getting a headache. Let me in, damn you.”

She flings the door open. Tyrion stands at her threshold, holding a carved wooden box with a gilded lion lock. He thrusts it up at her. “Are you going to take it or not? It's heavy.”

It's not, she thinks when she lifts the chest from his arms. But she hasn't been holding it for a half hour either. 

Tyrion strolls around the table, studying the shields and swords on the wall, the books on the shelves. He sniffs, pulls out the chair to the right of hers – Podrick's – and climbs into it. “Wine?”

She sets the box down next to the book on the table. “I have small ale or...I think a bit of mead.”

“Mead,” he says. He is half-drunk already. “The box is for my nephew. Don't open it until he arrives.”

She tries not to roll her eyes as she pours him half a glass and herself a small amount. “Seven hells, Tyrion. I'm beginning to see why even your sister was a misogynist.”

“Brienne is witty.” He giggles, takes a sip as she folds back into her chair. “I must be drunk.”

“I do not understand this obsession with _boys_. But I do not care either way; I only hope for health, for both of us.”

“You'll be fine,” he assures her, even though his own mother wasn't. He continues in the smallest, most earnest voice she's ever heard from him, “We don't have the best track record with girls in my family.”

It's the most nonsensical thing she's ever heard. With  _girls_ ? Tywin was a tyrant. Tyrion  _murdered_ him. Joffrey was insane. Everyone seems to agree that Tommen threw himself out a window. Cersei wasn't the only loon in the pond. 

She snorts in response, and takes a sip to hide her smirk. 

“But I will love a girl all the same. I feared I would be the last of us.”

He sounds so sad, so she tries to think of something that might cheer him. “You can have children of your own, surely.”

He's quiet, studying the mead as he twirls his goblet, watching it splash against the sides. “I have a wife in the North. I vowed the night I cloaked her that I would not touch her until she asked me to. I might wait a thousand years, but I do not wish...to  _escape_ my marriage either...though if she asked to be free, I would unchain her. My ne-niece is heir to the Rock as well as Tarth. The lion's roar from East to West, as far as Westeros stretches, and she won't even have usurp anyone to realize it. It's quite the achievement.”

“Sansa loves you,” she argues, and she thinks it's the truth. What it means, she doesn't know. Everyone knew she loved Jaime long before it meant anything at all, and in the end it wasn't enough. 

“And I her. But there is no passion in it on her part, and I've accepted it. I didn't climb all the way up here to whine about my love life and feel sorry for myself. I came to wish you both good health.”

Her heart leaps in her chest, fluttering. “Tyrion, you know it's his bastard, don't you? We never...”

“I don't, and neither does anyone else, and it's _not_. I don't care if you were bound by grumpkins on a cloud made of candy floss, the King says it happened so it did.” Tyrion sets down his goblet, picks up her paperweight, waves it up and down over the table, pretends it's running. “I had a stuffed lion very like this when I was a boy, a gift from my aunt on my first nameday. Jaime would steal it and wait behind doors and sideboards, and then jump out and attack me with it. He made the most ridiculous noises and I always squealed in surprise and tried to run away, and he always caught me and pretended the lion was devouring me. I would laugh and laugh. I think they might be my happiest memories. I gave this to him the first time I was allowed to come to the city. I'm glad it's yours now.”

“I'm sorry,” she manages to say. She doesn't cry; she hasn't been alone with Tyrion since Winterfell. She feared that this conversation would undo her, and she's shed enough tears in company to last her a lifetime, but surprisingly the tears don't come. It's dark and the lamps are the only light, but she feels warm and bathed in sunlight listening to Tyrion. The grief is there, but it's the cloak at her back rather than a suffocating weight. 

“Jaime always did love surprises.”

She remembers the hot rush as the bear's claws struck her shoulder, drawing blood. How the very air seemed to change around her, and the hush that fell over the crowd, and how she heard the beast sniff and knew that she had lost, that she'd run out of time. But. 'Get behind me,' he'd yelled, falling from the sky to save her.

“And he loved you.”

“I know,” she says, because she does. Perhaps he left because she wasn't enough, but enough of what? Hiding in the north, letting the kingdom tear itself apart while they huddled under the furs tasting of wine and desire and each other...where's the honor in that? She wasn't enough to outweigh a kingdom, or to override his sense of his responsibility to it. She wasn't the only person he loved enough to die for. 

He's not the only person  _she_ loves, for all that he's the only one she  _desires_ . And gods willing, she will never have to take a husband but him. The child she carries is enough; she's doing her duty to her father and her house. The rest is up to grace, and time. 

“You won't be alone in this. He'll be there with you.”

She twines her fingers, resting her palms against her stomach, smiles softly. “I know that too. He always is.”

He looks at her oddly, raises his glass. “To your health, sister, and the babe's. I give you my permission to name her Tyrion.”

She laughs and reaches out. Tucks a stray curl behind his ear. “I'll take that under due consideration, Uncle Hand.” 


	14. Fair Jonquil's Fool

The king comes down to the docks on his great black horse to bid them farewell. Ser Podrick and Ser Meera are mounted as well, flanking his grace, and Ned Dayne rides a tall pony and leads two packhorses. They are leaving for Harrenhal. 

He rides in a carriage with his father and his mother, Maester Samwell and his wife, and Lady Nightsong. Lady Tarly holds a quiet babe in one arm and a squirming toddler on her knee, and she's trying to teach the boy to wave. The people of the city line the street, come to cheer for them. 

Brienne rides in the carriage ahead of them, with the Lord Hand and Ser Bronn and Wylla. She doesn't wave, keeps her hands folded in her lap and her cloak around her shoulders, but she nods and even smiles at times at the smallfolk gathered along their procession, and is cheerful as she hugs the Hand, clasps Ser Bronn's shoulder, and alights from the carriage. He watches her as he hands down his mother and the ladies and the babes from their own carriage. Brienne is kneeling in the dirt next to the mounted King, clasping his extended hand in both of hers as she begs a blessing. 

Devan is glad they're going to Tarth for a while. He was glad to see his mother, and cried when she held him again the first time, but now she stops him in hallways to lick her finger and wipe a bit of dust from his cheeks, or finds him at dinner to tug his cloak back into place. It's humiliating to be mothered again when he's squire to the Lord Commander and has almost reached his sixteenth name day. Wylla leaves him alone. Brienne just expects him to be competent in his duties and diligent in his training, and he tries to be both. 

No one has told him why they're going, only where. When Brienne first shared the news with him, he was certain that she must know what Devan did, or at least the results of it. But when he mentioned Ser Brynden her face drew up in a little puzzle and Devan had to remind her that her father gave both of them shelter after the battle. 

Brienne holds Ser Podrick and Ser Meera in her arms for a length of time, whispering in their ears, while Devan's mother lectures him about writing her and reminds him of all his duties as squire. 

Whether Brienne remembers the name or not, Devan is not looking forward to his Lady Ser figuring out what they've all been hiding on the Sapphire Isle. He's fairly certain she's not going to be pleased, so he means to confess once they're a few leagues out to sea. 

Devan lets his mother hug him, and his father squeezes his shoulder and wishes him a safe return. He nods, almost makes his escape, but then he is enveloped in his father's arms and he feels his whiskers against his ear. “For all that is holy, hold your tongue; it's not yours to tell.”

It doesn't really surprise Devan that his father sees his heart, but he does see the wisdom in the warning. 

Tarth's sailors are loading their baggage onto the Just Maid, so his only duty is to escort the Lord Commander to her ship. When his father lets go, she is there, taking leave of her cousin and Lady Tarly and Devan's mother. 

His father kisses her cheek, wishes her good health. She grins and wishes him good luck, nodding to the Lord Hand and Ser Bronn.

“I'll need it, Ser,” his father laughs. “Hurry back when you're able.”

“I promise,” she says earnestly, and turns to him. “Well, it is time.”

Wylla appears just as she says it, and then the three of them are walking up the gangway and everyone is waving. It's so much better than the last time he left the city. Brienne takes up by the rail, waving back to her king and her friends as the crew pulls up the anchor and unties the lashes. Wylla hangs back, and Devan waits for her. 

“Don't you want to stand at the rail, Lady Wylla?”

“Oh, no, I couldn't – it's awfully high, isn't it?”

Brienne hears them, turns her head toward them. “You told me your father was a fisherman! You can't be scared of sailing.”

“In a swamp, Ser Brienne, in a little canoe! This is the sea and it's vast and fierce and stormy and swallows whole ships when its angry.”

“You've never sailed.”

“Donkey paths. In a sled. I've gone to great lengths to avoid it.”

Devan's seen Brienne smile and chuckle, but he's never heard her truly laugh and when she does it's with her whole body, her face lit up in a smile so bright it could blind a man. 

“Devan, take her left hand,” she says, leaving the rail and drawing close to them, wrapping her arms around the older woman's right arm. “We've got you, come on. We won't let you fall. It's glorious.”

Devan holds her other hand and they all take a step, and then another, until they're standing at the rail. 

The king and his council and their families stay on the docks as the oarsmen row the boat out enough to catch a breeze. There's little wind; it's a calm day, which will mean a lot of tacking and rowing. Devan likes choppy seas better, and brisk winds. The city recedes into the distance, the docks becoming smaller until finally he can't make out his father and mother at all and the crowd is a blur at the base of the metropolis rising out of the bay. He holds Wylla's hand the whole time, as Brienne told him to, and the woman's grip is tight as the ship rocks and turns and lists. 

“They're turning so the breeze is counter to the sail, so the wind will catch when they raise it,” Brienne explains. She looks around in wonder, shudders and smiles when the beam is untied and the sail unfurled. The ropes creak and crank as they raise the silks. It's the colored one, Tarth's azure and rose, gilded and silvered. 

He sees Brienne's excitement because he shares it. Wylla clearly doesn't; she winces when a pulley squeals against a rope, at the snap the sail makes as it fills. 

“See?” Brienne says, closing her eyes and inhaling deeply. The waves lash against the sides of the ship. “It's _glorious_.”

“I think I'm going to be sick.” Wylla is green. 

Brienne's eyes snap back open, and then she is rubbing Wylla's back with one hand and holding her up with the other. “Over the side, now. Just aim for the water.”

She catches Devan's eye over the older woman's bent back, shakes her head in amusement. 

Brienne is earnest and quiet and determined, the sword at everyone's back everywhere and all the time. Devan has never seen her as anything other than the fiercest knight, holding her body at rigid angles even when she's fighting. He admired that; all of the soldiers did, down to a man. She was never afraid to get her hands dirty, and slogged on long past exhaustion, so every man always knew he was being bested by a woman and worked harder for it. 

But here, away from her duties, she is kind and gentle. It's a side of her he's never seen. “Come on, let's take you to the quarterdeck,” she says to Wylla, and then to him, “Ask someone for a bucket. And then help me get my armor off; there's no sense rusting it in the spray.”

A bucket is duly procured, and he follows them, setting it on the floor next to the table. 

Wylla kneels and clings to the bucket, expelling everything in her stomach and probably then some in a great series of heaves. He helps Brienne with her armor quickly as she makes soothing noises and flings off her gauntlets onto the floor, waving him off as she unlaces her breastplate. “We'll tidy all of this later. Off with you – let me tend Wylla. I'll join you in a bit.

She turns her back to him, lifts her breastplate over her head, and lays it on the heavy squat chair, and he sees her wetting a cloth in the deep basin attached to one of the table's legs as he leaves, closing the wooden doors behind him, breathing in the deep salt of the ocean, feeling like he's going home even though he's only been to Evenfall once for all of ten days. 

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

They stop in a hundred small sheep fields to talk to farmers on their way to the Cove. Ser Collam, the young knight he's riding with, seems to know everyone they meet. It takes hours. 

This morning, there was a single scroll in the basket. It looked like Stark paper, edged in silver, and Selwyn had paled a little when he read it, looked thoughtful, and then tucked it away without disclosing its contents. 

It was...unusual. He wasn't unnerved, exactly, but then Selwyn had come to his office an hour later with a message for the sheriff of the cove and instructions to ride out and oversee their muster with Ser Collam. 

And he feels like he's been sent away. He thought they might complete it all in a day, but every other mile they're listening to stories about which sheep have given birth and which maids will be the local queen of May as he squirms in the saddle and Jonquil prances in little circles, tossing her head, as impatient as her rider. 

He nods and smiles at all the appropriate moments as Ser Collam, who has never actually left the island, recounts Ser Brynden of the Vale's imaginary deeds in the north. The tale grows more fantastic with each new flock, until finally he's forced to intervene as they trot up the next hill.    
  
“Ser Collam, I did not slay a giant made of dead people to save Ser Brienne and the Queen of the North. That is  _ludicrous_ . I was one soldier among many. If you must say anything at all, that I served with the army of the living and survived is sufficient.”

“Was it Ser Podrick then? That slayed the giant?”

He could tell him that yes, there was a giant. It was no where near their Ser Brienne, though, and it was felled by a girl no bigger than a spring lamb who died in her glorious deed, but he can only imagine how  _that_ would be embellished, so he shakes his head. “Where have you heard these ridiculous tales?”

“Everywhere. The merchants that come into port, the singers in the taverns. They say there were a thousand corpses to every living man, and that the King's sister gave mercy to the Stranger. They say Ser Brienne commanded the greatest knights of the Seven Kingdoms during Long Night, and defended the King and his family and every living man from destruction. And then they came south, to save the people, in the battle for dawn.” 

He's quiet as he considers this. Ser Collam seems earnest and honest enough, and it does sound like the sort of fantastic twaddle singers in taverns would go on about, but he'd never considered what the smallfolk were whispering about Winterfell. The Long Night. The Battle for Dawn. 

It had been a  _very_ long night for the people who were there, but it hadn't lasted more than twelve hours and a great many of them had somehow survived it. He can't imagine how it's taken on these proportions. He laughs. “Sadly, it's never so fantastic as the stories make it. It was a battle; a fearsome one, but less terrible than...”

He was about the say the Gold Road. It is still his definitive hell. But while Brynden Stone might get away with being at Winterfell, he had not been the man leading his childhood friends into the Dragon's mouth. “Than some of them are.”

“I was knighted because I fought when two Greyjoy corsairs landed at Morne. I managed to kill three of their silent sailors, and took a wound to my thigh. We lost four of our muster. It was...horrible...but it gets retold as a triumph. I am sorry for recounting tales, Ser. I'll hold my tongue.”

He wants to hear the stories, though. Just not as fodder for dairy maids and sheep herders on every sodding hillside. “You might tell  _me_ a little of what they say. Prepare me for what everyone else thinks happened.”

“Nothing of you, Ser Brynden, or many of the masses of men who fought and died. But they say that Ser Brienne and Ser Podrick and Ser Jaime Lannister held off the dead while the army retreated and that they fought so nobly it seemed as if their swords were flames in the darkness. All of them say that much, whether they speak of giants and dragons or no.”

He blinks quickly, bends his head down to Jonquil's shoulder and adjusts his stirrup to hide his face. “That's true enough. Your Lady Tarth was a light, and as long as she burned the men around her kept fighting. Even when all seemed lost.”

“Have you met her?”

He thinks for a moment it's an interrogation, but Ser Collam is guileless. 

“I've seen her, but only as a soldier in her camp.” 

“Is she as beautiful as they say?”

“What?” Surely it's a joke. He bites back a laugh.

“A lot of the older folks say she was a bit awkward when she was younger, but the singers all say she's beautiful and tall and shining in her armor, and the truest knight since Ser Duncan of the Kingsguard. They say Ser Jaime Lannister cast off his white cloak to marry her, and fought the Wildling King for her hand. That the King Beyond the Wall still courts her, wooing her back to the North to live as Queen of the Giants in the land of Ice. She must be very beautiful.”

He thinks of her face in the throes of ecstasy and wants to answer yes she is the most beautiful woman who ever lived, but Ser Collam will meet her face to face sooner or later and what he says now will be remembered. “She is fierce and loyal and kind.”

Ser Collam nods, his boyish curiosity sated. “We are fortunate to serve her. To serve Tarth. It's a tale worth telling, even without the giants.”

“You will serve her better by feeding into these rumors as little as possible. Let them sing their songs; the knights of her keep should speak with discretion.”

Ser Collam takes the advice well enough, nods in agreement. 

He thinks he has failed to make a lasting change, however, when they emerge from a stand of trees and see another farmer whistling to his dogs and herding his sheep. Ser Collam waves and shouts and goes trotting over, and Jonquil prances in place and snorts disdainfully. But Ser Collam leaves out the fantastical beasts, the suggestion that Ser Brynden was anything but a common soldier of the Vale. And he just says that Lady Tarth fought nobly and with honor.

They still stop at every stile and cow pond, so it doesn't make the journey faster. It does, however, make it a damned lot more bearable...and for that, he's grateful. 

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

After a long and fitful night, punctuated by intervals of holding Wylla's hair while she dry heaved over a bucket, Brienne unrolled her bundle of furs, wrapped the woman up in them, and dosed her with a bit of dreamwine from the ship's medical chest in an effort to ease her discomfort. It appears to have worked; Wylla babbles and snores in her sleep, but seems content. 

It's almost dawn; the waves are choppy, the ship moving fast. They are beyond the Hook, she knows by the movement of the deck below her feet. Brienne studies the looking glass mounted above the chest. Her skin is healthy and sun-kissed and hydrated, and she's pleased enough with it. Her features will never be other than what they are, and there's nothing she can do for them. But her hair...she is going home as Tarth's lady, not as King Brandon's chief knight. She usually slicks it back with grease to keep it out of the way, tying it off at the back of her neck and tucking the tail beneath her armor. It's not long enough to put up, as ladies do...but it's not short enough that she can do nothing either. Clean and washed and freed from the leather strap, it's so frizzy and fine it fluffs around her chin in a pale halo. She tries tucking just the parts that hang about her face behind her ears, and then blinks quickly. That works. Well enough, at least. She'll never be pretty, but it doesn't look frightful. 

She's changed out of her shirt and breeches and put on a wool tunic that hangs almost to her ankles. It drapes in folds from her shoulders, and the sleeves are enormous but fitted from her forearms to her wrists. It is like no tunic she's ever seen, and she has six of them in various colors. When Helaena and Gilly presented them to her, she protested that she wasn't going to be caught dead in a dress, but the material splits at the waist front and back. There are matching trousers that tuck into her boots and will allow her to ride. It's a compromise. And she doesn't look  _terrible_ , she thinks. They suit her. They're not pink lace and fitted waists and ill fitting shoulders that strain under her biceps. She's not an embarrassment, and the slate blue looks well enough with her eyes. 

She feels naked without her plate. It's like a second skin, her defensive shell, but she is determined to go through with this, to give Tarth its lady. She's going home to give her father and her people their heir, and she can survive a few months of waddling around in a woman's clothes. Her sword belt fits under the folds of wool and the pommel peeks out and she tests a draw. It's adequate. Fitting Oathkeeper back into its scabbard is more difficult with the fabric falling in the way, but with any luck she won't be doing a lot of sparring in these clothes. 

She takes a deep breath, blows out the lamp, and slips out onto the deck. Devan has spread his roll on the planks, near the bow, and is sleeping bundled in a thick wool cloak.

Brienne leans against wall of the quarterdeck, staring out as dawn breaks over the water. The air is chilly and the light is gray. The sea and the sky are a seamless expanse of it, broken only by the shadows of gulls in the mist. 

Her heart flutters in her chest. No, not her chest. The fluttering is below her heart. 

That strange feeling, so very like anticipation...she knows what that is now. She folds her hands above the grip of her sword, over her waist, and whispers to the babe she carries. “We are going home, love. To Evenfall.  _Home_ .”

Eventually the sky turns a pale blue and the sea a murky green, separating themselves. The mist dissipates as the sun rises in a thick orange disk on the port side of the ship.  _South._ They are already turned south, pushing between the hook to the West and Rosemary Hill to the East. 

Devan sits up in front of her, blinking the dim light, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He turns and sees her and sits up straighter. “Good morning, Ser. You look nice. I mean - “

“Thank you,” she interrupts, smiling a little. “The winds have picked up. We'll make harbor by noon, but let Lady Wylla sleep until we get past the Cove. We still have hours left at sea.”

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

“Sorry, what?” He's been quivering with nervous energy for a full twenty-four hours, and he slept fitfully. He was staring off at a stand of birch trees surrounding a little stone well, but he has the sense his hostess has been talking for a while.

Lady Eyfa, sometimes sweeper of the Sept and full-time sheriff of Gael's Cove, closes the door to the pig sty, folding her hands on the fence post and resting her chin on them, studying him with her head cocked. “Ser Goodwin's program. They help the butchers.”

“Well that's one way to provide free labor to the villages, I suppose.” He thinks it's stupid; their time would be better spent sparring or tending their armor or riding or a hundred other things, but he doesn't want to make enemies by saying so. 

She narrows her eyes. “The ones with no stomach for it are given other duties.”

“Right.” The other duties seem to entail breaking up fights over sheep pastures and driving cattle between fields. The wars might've come for Selwyn personally, but they never came to Tarth. Not really. Their fighting forces are competent and well-drilled, but they're hardly battle tested. A series of high outposts and lighthouses, with fires and mirrors, send signals across the island. The little coves and inlets are surrounded by rough seas and rocky outcrops. Hostile forces break up in their attempts to land, and if they manage it, are met in the valleys and ambushed by farmers and smiths with their assigned weapons. It works well enough, but it lacks polish and pomp. It lacks all of the trappings he associates with an army. 

For a man who hasn't stopped fighting and clawing and strategizing and killing since he was fifteen, it's a bit...boring. And his mind is elsewhere. 

“It's an adjustment. Tarth is not the mainland, Ser Brynden...nor does it want to be."

He grunts. “How would you know?”

“I was sixteen when I came here to be Argella's companion. I had time enough in the realm to know it and to want to escape it.”

Something catches Lady Eyfa's eye and she studies it before smiling like a riddle, nods at him. 

“Spar with your men, Ser. That's enough of a history lesson.”

He watches her go, watches her unadorned wool dress swish above her practical boots. Mistwood might not be a great house, but it's an old and comfortable one as far as he remembers.  _She chose this life_ , he realizes. The sheriff's house, just barely larger than a cottage, full of books and plants and strange instruments. The simple clothes. 

He is not the only one with secrets on this rock. He's not the only one hiding out, running away, trying to keep his head down and attached to his shoulders. 

He wanders back to the yard, where Ser Collam is sparring with some of the younger guards. He's competent, but he's not accomplished. Better defensively than offensively, they circle without meeting, ducking out in halfhearted thrusts but never boldly stepping into an attack. 

Spar with your men, he thinks. He has knowledge, and experience, and years of training to call on; he can offer them something, surely. He unbuckles his belt, leans his sword – Podrick's sword – next to the fence, and turns to a page. “Get me a tourney weapon...and a shield.”

He fits the shield over his right glove, over the iron and wood arm. There is a little catch beneath the thumb, and he flicks it to fasten the grasp over the bar. The men know he was grievously injured in the war, and is only newly recovered, but he hides the extent of it. Enough they think the arm is stiff and the hand weak; it holds the shield well enough, though at an awkward tilt. The practice sword is cheap and unbalanced in his left, a far cry from the perfect swing of Widow's Wail, but he weighs it carefully enough to know its weaknesses and compensate for them. 

“Ser Collam,” he calls out. The sandy-haired knight and a chunky redheaded boy are still circling, so he has no scruples interrupting the fight in progress. “Shall we dance?”

Ser Collam nods enthusiastically. “I'll be careful, Ser.”

“Don't be.” No one on the island has ever seen Ser Brynden wield a sword. He himself isn't sure what to expect. He thought he was pretty shit with one, though he did well enough in the North. But that was before the latest round of near-death experiences, and he's out of shape.

He hopes he doesn't embarrass himself as he crouches on his toes. He watched enough to know Ser Collam won't attack first, so he swings in a low thrust and hits the bottom of his opponent's shield as he shoves up with his own as hard as he can, driving forward. 

Ser Collam's sword flies out of his hand and he shouts yield. It's over so quickly he stumbles from the momentum, trying to stay upright, reeling. 

“Again,” he grunts, allowing the youth to fetch his sword and get his bearings. Ser Collam lasts longer the second time, getting in a total of five parries and one cautious thrust of his own before being disarmed as they both tumble into the dust. He grimaces as something catches his forehead, a buckle or vambrace, can feel hot blood. He touches his glove to it, looks at the smear, and shrugs. “I thought you said you fought off a corsair.”

“I did, Ser, and I'd do it again. My father's farm was behind me.”   
  
“Then try to think of that when you strike. Again.”

He's winded and old and grey and battered, a fraction of the swordsman he was in his youth with his hand intact, but he beats the young knight into the dust over and over. 

He hears their whispers, fury and devil and storm, as he slashes and lunges. “And he's not even in the  _songs,_ ” one of the boys calls to a fellow.

_Yes I am, you little shits_ , he thinks, his blood singing.  _I'm in all of them. And when I'm done with you, you'll be knights and soldiers worthy of your weapons._

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

His lady knight takes up a post on the port side of the bow two hours before they reach they harbor, peering into the distance at each green rock rising up from the eastern horizon. She's quiet and thoughtful. 

Devan breaks his fast and for a while the navigator allows him to take the wheel. It's so sensitive he could founder the ship by flinching. Just the smallest shift and the ship bears down under the wind, turning. 

The day is warm and sunny, even in the cool breeze coming off the water. 

It's the happiest he's ever been, sailing the flagship of the Stormlands through the strait. The only thing that could be better is if he were taking Shireen home, and for a few moments, he pretends he is. He pretends the sunlight and waves are enough to make even his grave and strange little friend smile, pretends that none of it happened and no one is lost. 

As they round the edge of the point, he gives the wheel over to more practiced hands and walks across the deck to where Brienne is standing. She nods at him, but goes back to watching the green hills grow closer. The water of the bay is the same brilliant blue of her eyes, he realizes, the color of the sapphires in Ser Podrick's sword. 

The sadness she's always seemed covered by – as long as he's known her, not just in King's Landing – has dissipated into the sea. Her hands lay relaxed on the rail, and her blue dress whips in the breeze. She's still wearing her sword, but none of her armor.

“Are you glad to be going home, Ser?”

She closes her eyes, just for a moment, but turns her mouth up at one corner. “I suppose. I suppose I might just be  _happy_ .”

“Does it feel strange to you, too?”

“It feels like an old friend I haven't seen in ages.”

He almost tells her then, in the sunlight dancing on the bay. It almost comes tumbling out of his mouth.    
  
“Go wake Wylla, if you don't mind,” she says, so he does that instead. Lady Wylla is awake, not quite a sickly looking as the night before. She's chewing on a cracker and holding the table in a white knuckled grip with her left hand, but she nods to him and smiles and lets him lead her back onto the deck as the sailors roll up the sail. 

They're weaving toward the docks in a steady row, and Brienne is leaning halfway over the rail and waving at the merchants and tradesmen whose ships they pass. He holds back with the older woman, not risking another trip to the rail, as the oarsmen turn the ship into position. He sees Lord Selwyn's bright blue cloak flapping on the dock, a group of guards behind him, and Brienne smiles and bounces on the balls of her feet as they tie off the ship. 

“Hello, father!” she yells as they lower the ramp. 

Selwyn strides forward quickly, calls back, “Welcome home, Ser Brienne of the Kingsguard!”

She laughs, making her way along the rail and matching his steps. “How are you here? I sent no word.”

“I had a raven from His Grace the King just yesterday. Hello, Seaworth,” Lord Selwyn spots him over the deck and waves before turning back to his daughter, who has pulled close to the rail and is smiling down at him. As she leans, the fabric of her dress catches and pulls taught, and Selwyn sees what Devan has been trying not to see all morning. A strange look comes over his face, and he rocks back on his heels. 

“You're with child,” he whispers, and somehow Devan can hear him over the din of the crew and the ship slapping against the docks and the screeching wood as the gangplank slides into place. There are tears in the big man's eyes as he looks up at his daughter. She nods shyly, blushing red, and then the plank is secured and she rushes down the ramp, throwing herself into her father's arms. She's taller than he is and they are both massive, but they spin on the docks, holding each other tight with their eyes closed. When she pulls back, it's to glance up at Devan and Wylla.   
  
“Take Wylla up in the carriage and get her settled in. My father and I are going for a walk.”

And then she buries her head in the crook of his shoulder again and hangs on for dear life. Devan can't hear their whispers, just a low murmur that sounds the way sunlight feels. 

Ser Brynden is no where to be seen, but Devan feels the storm in the distance, the foreboding of a sky about to break open.

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

They are stopped by a hundred people on their way up the hill. The old familiar faces greet her with knowing smiles and kind words, remembering the gangly pimpled girl who ranged about the city babbling about knights and valor and the great deeds of fell heroes. The younger ones look at her shyly, full of wonder and awe; to them, she is only the shining knight of a hundred songs carried over the seas. 

She knows what they sing, has come to terms with the whispers that follow her. They're almost never cruel japes or malicious slanders, but they're almost universally full of bullshit and hyperbole. 

Her father's arm is twined with hers, and he looks good, hale and hearty and happy. His hair is a bit more grey, and the lines around his mouth a bit deeper, but the years have been kind to him. The war spared him, and she is grateful. 

I can be happy with this, she thinks.  _Happy with what's left._ The world is more full of joy than she ever imagined, even during those long nights in Winterfell when peace was still a dream. 

“If only,” she mutters, but then checks herself. It's enough. You can't lose what you never had...and she has had so much more than she ever thought possible. 

“If only what,” her father whispers back a few moments later, in between greetings and leave takings, with a strange little smile. 

“Let's ride,” she says, walking faster, tugging on his arm, waving at the gathered smallfolk instead of pausing to exchange pleasantries. “I have so much to tell you.”

“I have tea,” he begins with dismay, but she tugs him along through the gates and toward the stables.   
  
“Tea can wait,” she answers, walking faster and faster with each step, her face alight, scanning the yard for a page or guard, calling for saddled horses. 

“ _Can_ you ride?” he asks suddenly, and she laughs merrily. 

“To Harrenhal and back in a day, a sennight ago, with a blood drenched cloak on my return. I'm well, father. I'll be careful.”

“You fought a battle? While...how long have you known?”

“It was one man, and Podrick killed him. But I didn't even know then...despite...” she pauses, biting at her lip, furrowing her brow. “Perhaps I didn't dare hope. I always thought I would fail you in this.”

“Brienne, you have never failed me.”

“I almost have, a thousand times.”

“But you _haven't_. It was not easy for me to let you go to Renly, but not because I feared you would disappoint me. You're all I have left of your mother, girl, and my only child. Any father would have been reluctant. And now you're home again, and a knight, and the _Lord Commander of the Kingsguard_. If you never had a child, you still wouldn't fail me. It's not your only lot of life.”

“You're happy, don't deny it.”

“I won't. I'm thrilled, but it's a piece of what I wanted for you, not the whole of it.”

“Thank you,” she says, but then she sees the page coming back with the horses and lets out a little cry of dismay to see Selwyn's big warmblood and a placid old bay she barely remembers. “What's happened to Jonquil?”

He looks down at his hands, won't meet her eyes. “I gave her to Ser Brynden.”

“You didn't. You wouldn't have. Father!”

He laughs at her and takes his reins, swings up into his saddle. 

“You gave my horse away?” She lets the groom help her up into the saddle and kicks the flanks. Her father is already trotting away, the sound of his mount's hoofbeats ringing over the cobbles. 

“He fought with you in the North, and he needed a horse,” he says as she catches up to him. 

“Seven hells, I don't even remember him! We had five thousand men at Winterfell. _A_ horse, fine, but Jonquil?”

“He'll be back with her by dinner, you can haul off to the stables then.” he laughs again, and she can't keep up the pretense of being perturbed in the face of his joy. But as soon as she smiles, he turns grave. “There is much to discuss. I'm not sure where to begin.”

“The King's sister offered a story when he raised me to his council.”

“Ah,” her father grunts, and what remains of his mirth dissolves.

“Were you ever going to tell me?”

He doesn't meet her eyes, just stares out at the trees and hills rising all around them. “Your mother's secrets...when you were young, I meant for her to tell you.”

“And...after?” Brienne barely remembers her mother, just the kindness of her touch and the softness of her voice and the warm cocoon of her arms. Her mother is more of a feeling than a person. 

“After what? Endrew left to guard you all and your futures, and then we lost your mother and sisters and brother. What was I supposed to say? That you were the grandchild of a deposed Targaryen Prince, waiting for a restoration that was never going to come, a lone dragonfly in a realm full of stags and wolves and lions? Even whispering it would've been treason. Even now...”

“His grace made me relinquish my claim, before I could sit as Lord Commander. I don't understand what you were playing at. Did you mean to raise us as pretenders?”

“No,” he says emphatically, and she believes him despite her misgivings. “We just wanted you to survive. Have prosperous, productive lives in a peaceful kingdom. We wanted to be a million leagues from Westeros, and war, and prophecies and blood and power. Your mother lost everyone she loved in a mad bid for dragons and if you'd never seen one she would've been happier for it.”

“The dragons saved us at Winterfell. They were the only thing that could hold back the Others...even the trenches failed. When they were on our side, they were awesome and magnificent...but I wasn't in the city. They are a terrible weapon, a terrible danger...we are better off without them. Without a Targaryen anywhere near the throne.”

He snorts. “You're near enough, aren't you?”

“But I'm no dragon, nor a wolf, for all of my mothers. I'm Brienne of Tarth of the Kingsguard, and it's all I care to be.”

“And another Lannister Lord Commander.”

She pales a little. “I suppose we must speak of that as well, though...it's complicated, father.”

“I know,” he says, and he seems content enough that she holds a lion in her belly. But he's only heard the lie, and he deserves the truth. 

“Tyrion says he means to name the babe heir to the Rock as well, and I'll hold him off as long as I can. But there was never any sept - “

“The Great Sept is still a pile of rubble and ash from the tales we hear. The Light of the Seven is not the most important part of a marriage.”

“I never asked you,” she says, dismounting in the clearing, helping her father down and leading him to the stone bench. “I never even _told_ you.”

He brushes a lock of her hair back from her face and then folds her hands into his own, squeezing. “You had more to consider than an old man a thousand leagues away.”

“You're really not angry?”

“I understand more than you realize, lass. Perhaps you'll be angry with me -”

“Never.” She closes her eyes tight, choking back a few tears that threaten to form. She doesn't want to be sad, doesn't want to cry. Her voice is a growl when she says, “I wish you could've known him.”

She keeps her eyes closed, leans her head on Selwyn's broad shoulder, rubbing at his palm with her thumb. 

“I do,” he whispers back.

“Pardon?” Her voice sounds soft and dreamy. She opens her eyes, looks above their heads at the red leaves stirring in the breeze, at the ravens scattered in the branches. It's a nice thought; here, now, in the Godswood, Selwyn can feel him too. 

“Ser Brynden is not who he claims to be.”

She studies her father, the small secretive smile and the wariness in his eyes, and for an irrational moment she wants to believe what she thinks he's hinting at. Her heart pounds in her chest, so loud it thuds in her ears, and she shoves his hands away. “Stop with your riddles already. What are you trying to say?”

He grasps her sleeve, tugging her down. “Calm yourself, the baby -”

“ _Say it_.” Please say it, please, even as she tells herself it's not, _it can't be…_

“Ser Brynden. _The Kingslayer.”_

There is an explosion in her head, that's the only way to describe it. Everything around her turns to light and heat and she hears a popping sound, is fairly certain she's just burst several veins and is probably on the edge of having a stroke. 

Then she feels rage, and she is pushing away from her father, tearing the sleeve of her dress as she reels back onto her feet. 

“What? How? You _bastard_.” She has never once in all her years cursed her father, but the words are out her mouth before she knows what she's saying. “ _Where?_ ”

Selwyn looks small as he shrugs from the bench.

“I sent him to Gael's Cove. Brienne – Brienne, wait.”

But her reins are in her hand, and she's jumping up to catch her stirrup and then she's spinning to stare at him with a look of such disdain her nostrils flare. “Don't mind if I borrow your horse,  _father_ . I'm sure the nag will see you safely back to your tea. I will deal with you later.”

And her head is pounding and her throat is closing as she digs her heels into the flanks and swats the horse's rear, leaving the Godswood in a dead run. Everything is falling in on her, and it's the cruelest joke anyone's ever played on her, but still...she needs to see it with her own eyes. 

He can't be...and if by some miracle he is, she's going to kill him herself.

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

“Good girl,” he croons, sidestepping Jonquil a dozen paces and then spinning her on her back hoof to face the trees. “That's it.”

Sparring with spotty youths was a stupid idea. He's tired and dirty and he hurts so, so badly. There's a cut over his right eye and he thinks what might be a bruise developing on his tender left cheek. He got a yield from every single one of them, but he'll pay for his triumph on the morrow. 

Maybe there'll be songs about him someday. Ser Brynden the Halfwit, the knight who tarried in a thousand fucking sheep fields while Ser Collam the Defenseless cavorted with dairy maids. 

That would be fantastic. 

He left Ser Collam with dairymaid number three fifteen minutes and half a mile ago. He's done nothing but arena drills since and has still moved over the crest of a ridge and down a line of trees. Laid out before him is another valley, dotted with ponds and pools and sheep and cows and a small stream. Splendid. He has no idea how far they've travelled or how far they have yet to go because Tarth has no landmarks, only endless identical hills. He just wants Evenfall and a glass of Arbor red and a hot bath. He flirts with the idea of riding off and leaving Ser Collam, but he's still trying to get to know these men and gain their respect, and they might believe patience is a virtue or some such rot. 

It isn't.

He backs her up a few paces, sidesteps the other direction. This way, she tosses her head and leans into the bit. “So that way lies home. You're a barn sour little wench, aren't you?”

He gets a happy snort in reply, but then a desperate lunge. He tugs at the rein, trying to get her hindquarters back under her, but she shakes her neck and pushes back, whinnying. In the distance, he hears a horse call back. Ser Collam's, perhaps, and he hears hoofbeats far away, pounding at a run. But it's not Ser Collam; it's coming from the other direction. On the far side of the valley, through the trees, another rider traveling faster than anyone should. 

_Ill tidings_ , he thinks, a knot in his stomach. He gives Jonquil her head, lets her leap into a canter and run down the hill. At two hundred yards, as the opposite horse plashes across the stream without breaking stride, he spies the pale hair and the tall sorrel and realizes it's Selwyn, and the knot twists. At a hundred yards he slumps in the saddle in shock, Jonquil's back hooves sliding in the dirt as she buckles to a dead stop. He slides off, drops to his knees still holding the reins in his fake wooden hand. 

It's not Selwyn.

He bows his head, looking at his hands, the true and the false one, gloved and hidden. He's landed in a disc of cow shit. Seven hells. Can this get any better?

He can smell her from twenty paces, he would swear on it. And then Selwyn's gelding is scrambling to a stop, kicking clods of sod into his face as it plants its hooves neatly.    
  
“ _You_ ,” she hisses, flying off her horse. In a dress that makes her look bigger than the Mountain, he sees, peeking from under his lashes.

And by the old gods and the new, she is angry. He darts a quick glance up at her face, which is pulsing red and white as her hair flies straight out. Her mouth is pursed in a thin little line, and her nostrils are like saucers. 

It's a sight that would make any man in the kingdom piss himself in fear. But he is not like other men. He's covered in shit and sweat and blood, his own and other peoples', and she looks like she's going to dismember him piece by tiny piece. 

She looks  _glorious_ . 

Can he make this worse? He manages, holding both his arms out in a sort of shrug, and looking up at her, and grinning stupidly. “Happy to see me, wench?”

Her hand, when she slaps him, connects with his already bruised left cheek, and he cries out from the pain that jolts across his jaw and down his neck. The sound of his cry is like blooding a hound, and then she is on him, snarling and biting. He gets his right arm up in front of his face, and she struggles uselessly against the wood and iron. She doesn't shove it against his neck and strangle him with it, so she's not even putting much strength behind the attack as she straddles him, snapping like a rapid weasel. And she's crying, angry with him and probably herself and most likely everyone they know. She grasps the arm in both of her hands, and pulls it down, peering over it. “Jaime, how  _could_ you?”

“Ser Brynden, actually -”

“Don't you _dare_.”

“Oh, I dare,” he snarls back, bucking his hips, grinding himself against her thigh just to emphasize his reaction to her. For the briefest moment, her eyes go glassy and she gasps, but then he ruins it. “Are you done chastising me, _wife_?”

She scrambles off him, somehow missing the cow shit, and sits on the grass, extending her hand to him. His  _left_ one. Pulling him up. She looks miserable. He much preferred her angry, like a vengeful goddess, to this sad face pulled tight with guilt. “Tyrion...Sansa said...and his grace – I was going to say it didn't seem to matter, but it seemed to matter  _very much_ . I knew it was wrong. I'm sorry.”

“I'm not. Not for a moment.”

“You _left_ ,” she breathes, still holding his hand. “I was so angry, and hurt. For a long time, I didn't understand. But then suddenly one day I did. If you'd stayed while the realm burned, you wouldn't be _you_. And I loved you. Even if you did leave cruelly.”

“If I'd left kindly, you'd have followed me.” He takes a deep breath. “I thought I was the only piece left on the board she might still think worth ransoming. But I was too late to serve as a bargaining chip.”

“They hung your bodies on the gates. Do you know that?”

He nods. 

“Who were they?”

“The queen and her consort, I imagine. Euron Greyjoy. I haven't exactly written my brother begging for details of his ongoing treason against the realm.” She meets his eyes. Hers are wide and wet with his betrayal, and his heart flips in his chest. 

“You agreed to this! To lie to me, to hide here -”

“I didn't! I was wounded, grievously so, and woke to find Seaworth rowing me through the bay in a dingy telling me my name was Ser Brynden. What was I supposed to do? And then you were Lord Commander of the fucking Kingsguard before the ink was even dry on your raven saying Brandon I-crippled-him Stark is King of I'm not even sure how many Kingdoms, and all I could hear is his little chirping voice asking me how I was sure there was an _afterwards_. But this is it, this the afterwards, and...” 

She is kissing him, over his brow and down his face, just shy of his lips. Leaning into him, and then his hand is on the small of her back, tugging her closer. She sighs with her lips against his jaw, moving her mouth over the tender skin of his neck, below his beard. It feels glorious. 

And then she goes still and rigid, breathes into his ear, “Jaime.”

He melts.

“We have company.”

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

He gapes stupidly as she scrambles to her feet, shaking the dirt and grass from her wool dress, her ungloved hand going instinctively to the sword she's hiding under all that fabric. Oathkeeper's grip disappears in her fist. “Who goes there?”

She tries not to blush as she faces the rider trotting down from the little copse, tries not to think about the fact that she's been home all of four hours, is visibly pregnant if you know where to look, and has just been discovered rolling in the grass with a man she reportedly barely knows. There is no way to make this look anything at all like proper. 

“Ser Collam, kind...lady?” The rider draws closer, puzzling out the way she stands at attention with a sword in her hand...but in a sodding dress. The dress was a _terrible_ idea. 

She hears Jaime's little snort of amusement and kicks a clod of dirt back at him with the heel of her boot. “Ser Brienne of the...”

She trails off as the young man falls off his still-moving horse and goes to a knee, pulling his sword and planting the tip three inches deep in the dirt. Her eyes widen; that's no way to treat a blade. Jaime snorts again, more loudly. “My lady ser, I am yours to command!”

He nearly shouts it, and she attempts an encouraging look as he stares up at her. 

“Very pleased to meet you,” she begins, trying to think of a way to explain the situation that sounds remotely plausible, but just then Jaime cries out like some sort of wounded animal. The boy scrambles up.

“Ser Brynden, are you injured?”

“My horse threw me. Our Ser Lady Tarth just checked me for breaks, and it appears I'll survive. Help me back onto the wretch, will you?”

Brienne tries to keep a straight face as young Ser Collam slings his arm around Jaime's waist and pulls him back to his feet, then helps him limp back over to  _her_ horse. She slapped him much harder than she meant to; he has an ever-deepening bruise on his cheek as well as the shape of her fingers outlined in bright pink. But then she notices the little flecks of blood dotting his tunic, and wonders if she really did injure him. 

She climbs into her saddle as Ser Collam helps him up and then walks back to collect his own mount. 

Jaime grimaces as he settles, wrapping the reins around his wooden hand, addressing his words to the boy. “I fear I'm more bruised from the beating I took from you earlier than the fall, but I'm an old man and my bones hurt. Would you be so good to ride on ahead of us – in  _haste_ – and have the steward draw a bath for me? Ser Brienne can ride post to make sure I don't tumble from my horse again.” 

He blinks gratefully at Ser Collam, who flushes with pleasure at the flattery and nods enthusiastically at the charge and is eating out of his hand and it's all she can do to keep the grave look on her face as she carefully nods to the boy. She looks at the grass, at the sky, everywhere but at Jaime, because if she looks at him she won't be able to keep from dissolving into laughter. 

Her father's gelding settles in next to Jonquil at a walk as the boy turns and kicks his horse into a slow canter. Haste indeed. She waits until he's on the far side of the approaching stream before growling out, “You're incorrigible. And you look like shit. Did that boy really beat you into this state?”

“Him and eleven others,” he flings back, drawing up in pride in his saddle. “I had eight yields off him before he begged me to pick on someone else. Are you going to kiss me again? Or curse me? Or...”

“You're a bald faced liar and a knave and a wretch and I don't know why I love you,” she says, shaking her head. 

Even his eyes seem gray in the sunlight, wide and pleading and greedy. “You still love me?”

“Pathetic.”

“How long will you stay?” He asks quietly.   
  
“Until the babe's old enough to travel.”

It takes a few seconds to register. He looks...arrested. Frozen and unblinking. 

“Try not to fall out of your saddle again, Ser Brynden. It would be unseemly.”

She waits until he looks over, studying her, before she takes a hand from her reins, puts it behind her back, and draws the fabric of her dress tight against her stomach. His lips part, and he sucks in air, and there are tears in his eyes as he fumbles for her reins and pulls both their horses to a stop. He reaches out, touching her gently, reverently. 

“Mine?” He chokes out, and the question is so ridiculous, so insulting, that she wants to jape at him, say of course it's not _his_ , it's Jaime Lannister's. But his palm is flat against the rounded curve of her belly, and he's looking at her with such wonder in his eyes. She covers his hand with her own and squeezes. “How long?”

“Four months, perhaps. Not more than five. His grace ordered me back to Tarth.”

“Does he know I'm here?”

“Maybe,” she answers, screwing her face up. “I think he might know everything. It's...unsettling. But whatever power he draws on, he wields it cautiously. With good intent, I think.”

“Cat would be proud.”

Brienne nods, feeling tears in her own eyes and blinking them back. “Of both of us. I think she would be happy for us.”

He smirks. “Happy I'm dead, more like, but you always are too generous.”

“I can't quit the council. Leaving it for half a year is bad enough, and I'll have to allow Gilly to do the nursing when I return, but I can't abandon my post. You know that, don't you?”

There's sadness in his eyes, but he nods. “And I can't leave Tarth. The Lady Arya gave me a neat little trinket, turns my eyes more grey than green, but...someone would recognize me, eventually.”

“I don't want to marry again, I -” 

“Had Ser Jaime Lannister, and no one else could ever measure up. It's a quandary.”  
  
“Stop it, I'm serious.”

“You're overthinking, wench. All I want is a bath and a bed and you in both. I don't care what we call it, or how much we have to sneak around to achieve it.”

She laughs in spite of herself, chewing on her lip, and then blushes. “I suppose we'll manage some goodbyes along the way. We always do.”

He ducks his head, swallows, and it's enough. He knows what he did was wrong, and why. She's forgiven him for far more, and with fewer reasons. She leans out of her stirrup, pulls his head around, and kisses him softly on the lips, smiling against his mouth. 

“It's almost summer,” she murmurs, “And we have life, and time.”

He kisses her with fire, then, and when she pulls back, she is gasping and he's smirking. “I like life. It's full of so many…possibilities.”

They smile at each other, and by mutual agreement give their mounts enough rein to lead them home. Jonquil is fresh, but Selwyn's steed is worn out and slower, and it turns into an easy trot over the well-trod road circling Tarth. Their horses know the way, and there is nothing to do but study each other in wonder as the sun slants over the hills, casting shadows. Now grey, now gold; as dappled as the horse that bears him, the light ripples and changes. 

“Is there any possibility I might have my horse back?” she calls, laughing. 

“I think not. I am yours but she is mine; fair Jonquil has found her fool. It's the happy ending you wished for.” He threads his fingers into the mare's fluffy white and gold mane, shaking it. 

“When she is grown, Rohanne of the Rock and I will make you rue the day you were desperate enough to turn horse thief, Ser Brynden.”

“Is that an offer or a threat, Ser Brienne? Who's Rohanne?”

“Ser Jaime Lannister's daughter. From east to west, Tyrion said, the lion's roar. He suggested Tyrion, even for a girl, but if it must be a Lannister name I prefer Rohanne. Rohanne of Tarth, Rohanne of the Rock. It works. And Rohanne Lannister was a friend of Ser Duncan the Tall. Sam and Gilly had a whole bunch of papers prepared with suggestions and their context, but that's the only one I liked.”

“And must it be a Lannister name?”

“Do I dare defy the Hand of the King?”

“How does Tyrion always manage to land on his feet like that?”

“He should ask you. I left you alone for five months and you swindled my father out of my horse and the future of my house.”

“Meanwhile you're plotting a hostile takeover of the Rock with your feral daughter. I'd say we're even.”

“Seven hells, I've missed you,” she cries as they canter over the stones, and this is all she ever wanted. They are golden in the golden hour before sunset in a wet, peaceful spring, and free. Maybe it's complicated, will always be complicated...but it's worth a little bending. And there is summer to look forward to, and its harvest, and leaving a future for their children and their king. 

On this slower ride back, she has time to really look at the familiar paths around her. Here and there, there are splashes of color, fading yellow daffodils and blooming purple lilacs and yellow-tipped rose buds. And once or twice, she even thinks she sees a blue one. Her mother had a hedge of blue roses and sometimes, in her dreams, she can still smell it.

She smells it now, in springtime on Tarth, above the stench of shit and horse and blood. By her side rides a man who smells and feels and tastes like Jaime, but isn't, not quite. Evenfall rises up out of the fading sun to meet them. The moon is a pale crescent above the evening star over the bay as they trot down toward the stables.

It's a castle made of candy floss and lies, but it will hold, she thinks. It's built on solid rock; they keep propping it up with love. 

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

Her father meets them in the yard, shakes his head but pulls Brienne down from her horse, forgiving her, and for a moment she could be a child again she looks so abashed and grateful.

Selwyn winks at him over her shoulder. “Six hours from the deck of a ship to coming home looking like you've been brawling in a pig yard. That's a record, even for you. I see you met Ser Brynden; do you remember him now?”

She shakes out her dress and waves him off with her wrist. “If you'd said the annoying one, I would have remembered him all along.”

“You would do well not to flirt with my castellan in public,” Lord Selwyn hisses. 

“I'm not _flirting_ ,” she pouts, but he is laughing, falling in on the other side of the Evenstar as they walk back to the keep. “I am Lord Commander of the Kingsguard,” she continues with a sniff, running her hand through her tangled hair.

He can't help himself. “Such a distinguished title, isn't it my Lord? Only held by the greatest knights who ever lived. One wonders what it would be like to be in the company of such a luminary.” 

“Luminary. Indeed. And that's why I just had to convince young Collam that Ser Brynden here must've fallen on a rock in the shape in your palm after you unhorsed him.”

“He unhorsed himself.”

“Pity. We've been having tea and Lady Wylla was just telling him that that's how knights greet each other in the far north, with impromptu bouts of jousting to test each other's mettle. My boys of summer are terrified of you both.”

“Good,” he says, just as she mumbles, “I'm sorry father. We'll try to be good.”

Selwyn stands on the stair above them, towering over them both, and raises an eyebrow as he looks between them. “I would believe that of one you alone, perhaps. Under some duress. But the two of you together? Ser Brynden, school your face, you look like an underfed puppy. And Brienne...stop provoking him.”

Her eyes widen in indignation, and it's fetching. Selwyn packs her off to her rooms to rest and dress for dinner, but holds his arm, bending down to whisper in his ear, “If I catch you in the service hallway, I'll geld you...understood? Your bath is drawn.”

He nods, packs his tired body down the hallway to his rooms, and begins shrugging off his filthy tunic. And then she is there, standing in the doorway off the privy, a vision in a cloud of blue, and in two strides she is there beside him and helping him, running her fingers over the wood bones and iron gears of his false arm as she unbuckles it from his chest. Her hands are gentle and warm on his skin. He slides into the bath at her prodding, turns around to watch her undress.

She doesn't hesitate, pulling off her boots and trousers and then lifting the folds of her blue dress over her head and letting it pool on the floor at her feet.

The water is warm and wonderful and soothing. The bath isn't big enough to both of them, but they tangle their feet and legs together as she crawls in across from him, and they make it work. 

“You look beautiful in this light,” he tells her, his voice breaking with wonder. She _is_ beautiful. 

“Brienne the Beauty, glorious knight of song, Lord Commander. It's a farce.”

He splashes water at her, digs his toes into her thigh, catches her ankle in his hand beneath the water. “I've never slept with a Lord Commander before. Tell me, is it all it's cracked up to be?”

“It was alright. I thought I might try a wildling next, or perhaps the Prince of Dorne, he's rather fetch-”

She dissolves into laughter as he throws himself into her arms, growling. “Shut up, Brienne.”

And then he is in her and all over her and everything is perfect. High in the halls of Evenfall, he is safe in her arms and home. He never wants to leave.


	15. Epilogue: The Doom of Old Valyria

As she banks another log on the fire, the rusty light catches in her silver-shot dark hair and sets it aflame. She could almost be a beauty. He's never desired a woman, but he's loved many of them in different ways and for various reasons. Cat of White Harbor, fellow sailer, is too old and too domestic to be a maiden, but too young to be a crone. Neither is she a mother. She is not some envoy of the Seven. She speaks their language, knows their prayers, never speaks ill of them, she just...doesn't seem much to care. 

She doesn't go on about them now, though she brought him steak and a bottle of wine from Westeros and made him all the tastes and smells and feelings of home. If he'd survive the journey, he'd go back to Westeros to be buried...but he's long beyond that now. The pain is ever-present. He is wasting, feels the darkness creeping over him. It is both too fast and too painfully slow. 

It's a miracle that she seemed to sense it, showed up at his little house with a feast fit for a lord or king and without her ever-present smith, with time enough to walk this journey with him.

She is here to give him mercy. 

She has poured out cups of wine, one for each of them. To his, she added a gift. 

But he is not ready to toast to the unknown, not yet. He savors the salt taste of the steak's blood in his mouth, the warmth of the rag she laid tenderly over his brow.

She has long met him for meals when they came this way, offered him stories of home in the tongue of his youth, but she's never asked his secrets and he knows she carries her own close to her chest. 

But now it is no longer time for secrets. He's had adventures; he made a life here, far away. He's had some lovers and many friends. He doesn't particularly want to leave...but it's time. This isn't living, it's just dying. 

She's here to help him, and he has a favor to ask. He gathers as much strength as he can.   
  
“You told me when we met you had a nephew, Gerry. A bright little lad with a crown of dappled silver and gold curls and eyes of emerald green.”  
  
She smiles at the memory. “I did, didn't I?”

“I heard a song in a tavern the last time I went down to the docks. Ser Gerion the boy knight, sunlight and silver, rode a horse the color of his hair, won his first joust at seven against a member of the Kingsguard -”

“At Winterfell? He unseated _Meera_...never mind. Doesn't matter.”  
  
“I was Gerion, too.”

“I thought you might be. Gerry the Green, for your eyes...it wasn't a large leap.”

“And you're Arya Stark.”

“Sometimes. I can be now, if it matters. Cat was my mother's name...I'm not trying very hard to hide from you either.” She's holding his hand now. She feels like his mother, come to care for him. 

“The boy...I know the songs aren't true, but who is he?”

“Gerry Lannister? The Lion of Tarth. Son of two successive Lord Commanders of the Kingsguard. There can't help but be songs. They say the young Evenstar fell from the sky during the Long Night, that his father died to give him life. I guess he's twelve now and squiring for Ser Podrick, but the last time I saw him he was six, and riding his dappled horse like a bat out of hell, chasing his mother and Tarth's castellan. He's a real boy, and a holy terror. He bit my dog at dinner. But he's a cheerful one, or he was, always laughing.”

“Ser Jaime Goldenhand and Brienne the Beauty. I've heard all of those ones too. They always play them with the Bear and the Maiden Fair. I'm glad my nephew had a moment of happiness...I wondered if he ever would.”

“More than a moment, Ser Gerion. Gerry is a fine boy, I like him.”

“He'll take the Rock?”

She shrugs. “Perhaps. My sister has been...trying...on occasion. It complicates matters. We'll see.”

He smiles. “Any son of Tyrion is not the boy I need. He'll be too clever for swordplay. Your Gerry will do.”

“Do for what?”

“Hand me that, the leather,” he points, but he doesn't really have the energy to do what he wants done. “Unwrap it.”

She does, holding the bundle in her lap and untying the knots. She draws in a hiss as the flap falls away. 

“Brightroar. I meant what I said, don't trouble with sending my bones home, but Ser Gerion should carry her. Would you -”

“I will. I'll see that he gets it, somehow or another. And share your blessing, and what I know of your tales.”

“I'm ready.”

“What are we toasting to?”

Life. Choices. Consequences. Desire. 

Home. 

He picks up his goblet, sniffs it deeply, considers it solemnly. 

“Tyrion gave it to me. I've been saving it for an occasion. This one.” She raises her own glass, smiles at him. 

_Gratitude_ .

“Thank you.” He takes a deep shuddering breath. Mother's Mercy. The Milk of Kindness. “To Ser Gerion Lannister – _long may he roar_.”

They drink to that. The wine tastes like it should, of home and his youth and the Western Hills. It tastes like ripe vineyards and sunlight and gold. 

_Summer._

He's been grey for years, but now he's gold again.  
  
“I'm glad you're a Cat,” he mutters,  slurring his last words  as the air shimmers and dances with light and song. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My son said I couldn't do this, make it believable and make it something I could live with...and I can live with this. Sure, it's all freaking unicorns and it ends with the warmest, fuzziest little assisted suicide I could possibly dream up...but I can live with it. Just leave me here on the island of Skagos with Rickon and our unicorns and Gerry's pony Jonquil. 
> 
> Not sure anyone's read this far, but if you have - thank you! 
> 
> And thank you to the girls of JBO, who with their relentless Be Positive! posts forced me to find the silver linings (despite my kiddo's take) and to Close the Door...which got me through LONG years of STUPID FUCKING PLOTS with lots of laughs on my commutes. 
> 
> I never played in this pond because the creator doesn't like people messing with his toys...but once I got going, I couldn't stop. Sorry, George. I fucked your lore six ways to Sunday in an attempt to wrestle your TV adaptation into something I could swallow. 
> 
> If you're into JB, whether you like this crackfest or no, this is the song that inspired the beast that became Stay Gold. First Aid Kit is awesome. https://youtu.be/veHUZMoKObc


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